HEROES  AND  HEROINES 
OF  FICTION 

MODERN  PROSE  AND  POETRY 


FAMOUS  CHARACTERS  AND  FAMOUS 
NAMES  IN  NOVELS,  ROMANCES,  POEMS 
AND  DRAMAS,  CLASSIFIED,  ANALYZED  AND 
CRITICISED,  WITH  SUPPLEMENTARY  CITA- 
TIONS  FROM  THE   BEST  AUTHORITIES 


BY 
WILLIAM  S.  WALSH 

AUTHOR  OF  "CURIOSITIES  OF  POPULAR  CUSTOMS,"  "HANDY  BOOK  OF  LITERARY  CURIOSITIBS,' 
"  THE  BANDY  BOOK  OF  CURIOUS  INFORMATION." 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LONDON 
J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 


^<ti\ 


COPYRIGHT,   I914 
BY  J.  B,  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

GIFT  OF 


•         •     •      I        It       < 


PRINTED  BY  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

AT  THE  WASHINGTON  SQUARE  PRESS 

PHILADELPHIA.  U.  S.  A. 


W33 


HEROES  AND  HEROINES 
OF  FICTION 

MODERN  PROSE  AND  POETRV'' 


Aaron 


Abddazer  * 


A 


Aaron,  in  Titus  Andronicus,  attri- 
buted to  Shakespeare,  a  Moorish 
prisoner  introduced  into  Act  i,  Sc.  i. 
Savage,  uncouth  and  unnatural,  cur- 
sing the  day  in  which  fate  has  re- 
strained him  from  committing  "  some 
notorious  ill,"  his  subsequent  conduct 
justifies  the  description  he  gives  of 
himself. 

Abaddon,  in  Milton's  Paradise  Re- 
gained (iv,  624)  a  personification  of 
the  Jewish  hades.    See  vol.  11. 

Abadonna,  the  penitent  fallen  angel 
of  Klopstock's  Messiah.    See  vol.  11. 

Abberville,  Lord,  hero  of  a  comedy, 
The  Fashionable  Lover  (1780),  by 
Richard  Cumberland,  a  young  noble- 
man who,  under  the  guardianship  of 
the  nerveless  and  incompetent  Dr. 
Druid,  a  Welsh  antiquary,  recklessly 
squanders  his  patrimony  and  becomes 
enmeshed  in  the  toils  of  an  unscrupu- 
lous |s^oman  of  the  town,  Lucinda 
Bridgemore.  He  is  saved  from  his 
evil  courses  by  his  father's  executor, 
Mr.  Mortimer,  and  his  honest  Scotch 
bailiff. ,:; 

Abbot  The,  titular  character  in 
Scott's  romance  The  Abbot.  See 
Glendenning,  Edward. 

Abdael,  in  Dryden's  Absalom  and 
Achitophel,  a  character  intended  for 
General  Monk,  afterwards  Duke  of 
Albemarie,  who  was  a  loyal  partisan 
of  Charies  II. 

Abdaldar,  in  Robert  Southey*s  ori- 
ental epic,  Thalaba  the  Destroyer 
(1797),  a  magician  chosen  as  the  de- 
stroyer of  Thalaba  who  died  as  he 
was  on  the  point_of ^stabbing  Thalaba. 


Abdallah,  titular  hero  of  Abdallah 
or  the  Four-leaved  Clover  (Ft.  Abdallah, 
ou  le  Trefle  ^  Quatre  Feuilles)  an 
Arabian  romance  by  Edouard  La- 
boiilaye  (1859);  English  translation 
by  Mary  L.  Booth  (1868). 

Abdallah,  son  of  a  Bedouin  woman, 
widowed  before  his  birth,  is  charged 
by  an  astrologer  to  seek  the  four- 
leaved  clover,  subsequently  explained 
to  be  a  mystic  flower  hastily  snatched 
up  by  Eve  at  her  expulsion  from  Eden. 
The  leaves  are  respectively  copper, 
silver,  gold  and  diamond.  The 
diamond  leaf  had  dropped  from  Eve's 
trembling  hand  inside  the  garden;  the 
others  were  scattered  over  the  world. 
The  deeds  by  which  Abdallah  seeks 
to  win  the  successive  leaves  form  the 
staple  of  the  plot. 

Abdallah,  in  Byron's  poem.  The 
Bride  of  Abydos,  a  brother  of  Giaffer, 
murdered  by  the  latter. 

Abdallah  el  Hadji  (the  Pilgrim),  In 
Scott's  romance,  The  Talisman,  an 
ambassador  from  Saladin  to  Richard 
Coeur-de-Lion,  who  arranged  all  the 
preHminaries  for  the  combat  between 
Kenneth  of  Scotland  (q.v.)  and  Con- 
rade  de  Montserrat. 

Abdelazer,  hero  of  a  tragedy,  Ab- 
delazer,  or  the  Moor's  Revenge  (1677), 
which  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn  founded  on 
Lust's  Dominion,  or  the  Lascivious 
Queen,  an  Elizabethan  play  falsely 
attributed  to  Marlowe.  Mrs.  Behn 
was,  in  turn,  laid  under  contribution 
by  Young  in  The  Revenge. 

Abdelazer  is  son  of  the  Eang  of 
Fez,  who  has  been  conquered  and 


Mi05015 


Abdiel 


Abigail 


killed  by  the  King  of  Spain.  Devot- 
ing his  life  to  revenge  he  begins  by- 
accepting  the  advances  of  the  lascivi- 
ous queen,  proceeds  to  slay  the  king, 
his  son,  and  then  the  queen  herself, 
and  is  finally  slain  by  the  King's 
other  son,  PhiUp.  The  outlines  of 
Y©i£ing,'6,  Zaaga  li^-v-p  ;are  evidently 
boTVp^ed  from-'AbjiefeseiJ  but  Zanga 
keepo  "uiSie  -to-'hi's  6ir^fe»aim  of  ven- 
g/eance,,  .while .  AbdelaiJer.  is^  iurther- 
,  Ti\dre\sh,iy3di  bj^  ^mbJtifift,  'jealousy, 
'.ahcJ.'hibHbi'tyC     !  J  ..!.*••  •.' 

Abdiel  (Hebrew  abd,  servant,  and 
*el,  God),  in  Milton's  Paradise  Lost, 
the  one  seraph  who  refused  to  join 
Satan's  rebellion  against  the  Almighty 
in  Heaven. 

Faithful  found, 
Among  the  faithless,  faithful  only  he; 
Among  innumerable  false  unmoved. 
Unshaken,  unseduced,  unterrified, 
His  loyalty  he  kept,  his  love,  his  zeal. 
Paradise  Lost,  Bk.  v,  896. 

Like  Zophiel  in  the  same  poem  he 
seems  to  have  owed  his  introduction 
into  the  heavenly  hierarchy  to  Milton 
himself.  The  name,  indeed,  may  be 
found  in  I  Chronicles  v,  15,  as  the 
son  of  Guni,  but  thorough  search  has 
failed  to  reveal  any  mention  of  a 
seraph  of  this  name  in  Biblical, 
Cabalistic  or  patriotic  literature.  As 
to  the  character  itself  Milton  may 
have  modelled  it  upon  the  herald 
angel  Raphael  in  Vondel's  choral 
drama  of  Lucifer.  The  lines  quoted 
above  apply  equally  well  to  Raphael 
as  to  Abdiel.  In  each  case  a  single 
seraph  opposes  the  enemy  in  his  own 
palace,  all  imdaunted  by  the  hostile 
scorn  of  myriads.^  That  this  is  no 
mere  coincidence  is  shown  by  many 
other  similarities  between  the  Dutch 
drama  and  the  English  epic. 

Abellino,  hero  of  M.  G.  Lewis's 
tale.  The  Bravo  of  Venice,  a  bandit 
who  for  the  furtherance  of  his  schemes 
assumes  staccato  disguises  as  a  beggar 
and  winds  up  in  glory  as  the  husband 
of  the  Doge 's  niece.  Lewis  founded  his 
tale  on  a  German  story  by  Zschokke, 
A  hcdlino  the  Great  Bandit,  which  was 
adapted  for  the  American  stage  by 
William  Dunlap  (1801).  Other  plays 
were  also  based  on  Zschokke. 


Abencerages.  A  powerful  Moorish 
family  whose  quarrels  with  their 
rivals,  the  Zegris,  hastened  the  fall  of 
the  kingdom  of  Granada  in  Spain. 
The  love  of  Aben  Hamad,  an  Aben- 
cerage,  for  the  wife  or  sister  of  Boab- 
dil,  led,  in  1485,  to  the  slaughter  of  all 
the  heads  of  the  family  in  the  Alham- 
bra^  palace.  This  legend  has  been 
utilized  by  Chateaubriand  in  his 
romance  of  The  Last  of  the  Abencer- 
ages (1827).  Aben  Hamad,  the  hero, 
is  accused  of  adultery  with  Queen 
Daxara  and  perishes  with  thirty-five 
other  members  of  his  family  in  a 
general  massacre. 

Aben-Ezra,  Raphael,  in  Charles 
Kingsley's  historical  novel,  Hypatia, 
a  friend  of  the  Prefect  of  Alex- 
andria. 

Abessa,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene 
(1590),  an  impersonation  in  female 
form  of  abbeys,  convents  and  mon- 
asteries. She  is  the  daughter  of 
Corceca  ("  blind-heart  ")  and  the 
paramour  of  Kirkrapine.  Una  on 
her  lion,  searching  for  the  Red  Cross 
Knight,  called  out  to  Abessa,  who 
was  so  terrified  at  sight  of  the  lion 
that  she  ran  into  the  house  of  BHnd 
Superstition.  The  lion,  however, 
broke  down  the  door.  The  allegory 
means  that  when  Truth  arrived  the 
abbeys  and  convents  became  alarmed 
and  barred  her  out.  But  that  noble 
lion,  Henry  VIII,  broke  in  as  the 
royal  advocate  of  the  true  faith. 

Abhorson.  An  executioner  intro- 
duced in  Measure  for  Measure  into 
a  single  scene  (Act  iv,  So.  2),  who  has 
given  much  food  for  conjecture  by  his 
principal  speech: 

Every  true  man's  apparel  fits  yotir  thief. 

Abigail,  a  general  name  for  a  lady's 
maid  or  waiting  maid  among  eigh- 
teenth century  novelists,  following  in 
the  wake  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
who  bestowed  it  on  the  "  waiting 
gentlewoman  "  in  The  Scornful  Lady. 
Possibly  Abigail  Hill  (Mrs.  Masham), 
the  waiting  woman  to  Queen  Anne, 
helped  to  popularize  the  name  among 
her  contemporaries.  In  the  Ola 
Testament  (I  Samuel  xxv,  2,  42), 
Abigail  waited  on  David  during  his 


Abner 


Absoluto 


flight  from  Saul  when  her  husband 
Nabal  refused  to  do  so. 

Abigail,  heroine  of  Christopher 
Marlowe's  The  Jew  of  Malta  (1591). 
When  the  house  of  Barabas,  her 
father,  is  seized  by  the  Christians 
and  turned  into  a  convent,  she,  at 
her  father's  command,  becomes  a  nun 
in  order  to  recoup  the  treasures 
concealed  there.  Her  simulated  con- 
version becomes  real,  she  turns 
Christian  in  earnest,  and  Barabas 
goes  mad,  poisons  her  and  ends  by- 
being  precipitated  into  a  boiling 
cauldron  which  he  had  prepared  for 
a  Turkish  prince. 

Abner,  in  Racine's  tragedy  of 
Athalie,  the  confidential  friend  of 
Joad.  It  is  to  him  that  the  high  priest 
addresses  the  famous  line: 

Je  Grains  Dieu,  Abner,  et  n'ai  point  autre 

crainte. 
(I  fear  God,  Abner,  and  have  no  other  fear.) 

Abou  Ben  Adhem,  in  Leigh  Hunt's 
short  poem  of  that  name,  learns  from 
an  angelic  vision  that  "  one  who  loves 
his  fellow-man  "  stands  first  in  the 
regards  of  the  Almighty. 

Abra,  in  Matthew  Prior's  historical 
and  didactic  poem  Solomon  on  the 
Vanity  of  the  World  (171 8),  a  concu- 
bine who  captivates  the  weary  and 
sated  monarch  by  her  obedience  and 
fidehty.  Two  lines  in  Solomon's 
speech  are  specially  famous  as  calling 
up  in  concise  ^  form  an  image  of 
womanly  devotion: 

Abra  was  ready  ere  I  called  her  name. 
And  though  I  called  another,  Abra  came. 
u,  364. 

Prior  possibly  borrowed  the  name 
from  the  mediaeval  romance  of 
Amadis  of  Gaul,  wherein  the  Sultan 
of  Babylon  has  a  sister,  Abra,  who 
secures  his  throne  after  he  is  slain 
by  her  lover,  Lisuarte. 

Abraham-Cupid,  in  Romeo  and 
Juliet  (Act  ii,  Sc.  i),  is  an  expression 
which  has  given  much  trouble  to  the 
commentators.  Upton  conjectures  it 
to  be  a  printer's  error  for  Adam  Cupid, 
which  he  twists  into  an  allusion  to 
Adam  Bell,  the  outlawed  archer. 
Dyce,  more  plausibly,  thinks  that 
Abraham  is  merely  a  corruption  of 
auburn,  and  supports  his  view  by 


citmg  passages  from  old  books  where 
the  corruption  is  imquestionable. 
Mr.  R.  G.  White  remarks,  in  con- 
firmation of  Dyce,  that  "  Cupid  is 
always  represented  by  the  old  painters 
as  auburn-haired." 

Abram  or  Abraham-men,  a  cant 
term  for  a  certain  class  of  beggars  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  The  anony- 
mous Fraternity  of  Vacabondes  (1575) 
suppHes  this  definition: 

An  Abraham-man  i»he  that  walketh  bare- 
armed  and  bare-legged,  and  feign eth  himself 
mad,  and  carrieth  a  pack  of  wool,  a  stick 
with  bacon  on  it,  or  such  like  toy  and  nameth 
himself  Poor  Tom. 

Absalom,  in  Dryden's  Absalom  and 
Achitophel  (1681),  a  political  satire 
in  verse,  is  intended  for  James,  Duke 
of  Monmouth,  a  natural  son  of 
Charles  II  by  Lucy  Waters.  He 
resembles  the  Absalom  of  the  Old 
Testament  in  his  personal  charms, 
his  popularity  with  the  masses  and 
his  unfilial  behavior  towards  his 
putative  father.    See  Achitophel. 

Absent-minded  Beggar.  Kipling's 
jovial  nickname  for  Tommy  Atkins 
(the  British  soldier),  in  a  poem  of 
that  name  written  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Boer  war  and  printed  in  the 
Daily  Mail,  October  31,  1899. 

Absolon,  in  The  Miller's  Tale,  one 
of  Chaucer's  Canterbury  Tales  (1388), 
a  pompous  and  conceited  parish  clerk, 
full  of  many  small  accomplishments 
of  which  he  is  inordinately  vain.  He 
is  outwitted  in  his  designs  on  Alison 
{q.v.),  the  young  wife  of  an  old  car- 
penter, by  his  rival  Nicholas. 

Absolute,  Sir  Anthony,  and  Captain 
Absolute,  father  and  son  in  Sheridan's 
comedy  of  The  Rivals  (i775)-  .Sir 
Anthony  is  a  boisterous,  blustering, 
domineering  old  gentleman,  firmly 
persuaded  that  he  is  the  rnost  amiable 
of  beings  and  really  hiding  a  warm 
heart  under  his  fierce  exterior.  The 
son,  though  gallant  and  fine-mettled, 
is  adroit  enough  to  make  his  way  by 
conciliation,  strategy  and  dry  humor. 
Under  the  name  of  Ensign  Beverley 
he  courts  the  heiress,  Lydia  Languish, 
and  by  this  disguise  precipitates  a 
comedy  of  errors  that  are  not  cleared 
up  tmtil  the  end.    Hazlitt  thinks  the 


Absolute  Wisdom 


Acres 


elder  Absolute  is  a  copy  after  Smol- 
lett's kind-hearted,  high-spirited  Mat- 
thew Bramble  in  ^Humphrey  Clinker. 
See  Acres,  Bob/ 

Absolute  Wisdom,  a  sobriquet 
popularly  bestowed  upon  Sir  Mat- 
thew Wood  (1768-1843).  A  staunch 
supporter  of  Queen  Caroline.  On 
the  death  of  George  III,  he  escorted 
her  from  France  to  England  and  sat 
by  her  side  in  an  open  landau  when 
she  entered  London  (June  6,  1820). 
He  thus  drew  upon  himself  the  shafts 
of  all  the  Tory  wits  and  witlings  of 
the  period. 

Abudah,  in  James  Ridley's  Tales 
of  the  Gent  (1764),  a  wealthy  merchant 
of  Bagdad.  Nightly  pestered  by  a 
little  old  hag  of  hideous  aspect,  he  is 
driven  by  her  threats  to  seek  for 
"  the  talisman  of  Oromanes,"  and 
finds  it  after  many  terrible  adventures 
only  to  learn  that  it  is  an  injunction 
to  love  God  and  to  obey  His  com- 
mandments. 

Like  Abudah  in  the  Arabian  story,  he  is 
always  looking  out  for  the  Fury  and  knows 
that  the  night  will  come  and  the  inevitable 
hag  with  it. — Thackeray. 

Acadia  (Fr.  Acadie,  from  the  river 
Shubencadie),  the  original  name  of 
Nova  Scotia  given  by  the  first  French 
settlers  under  De  Monts,  in  1604, 
famous  in  Hterature  as  the  scene^  of 
Longfellow's  Evangeline.  After  being 
a  subject  of  constant  contention 
between  France  and  England,  the 
province  was,  by  the  treaty  of  Utrecht, 
1713,  ceded  to  England.  But  the 
original  settlers,  French  by  .blood, 
remained  French  in  feeling  and  in 
language,  a  bar  to  Anglo-Saxon 
colonizing  and  even  a  menace  to 
British  security.  In  1 755  it  was  deter- 
mined as  a  measure  of  safety  to 
expatriate  the  French  Acadians.  The 
troops  then  in  Nova  Scotia  were 
enlisted  New  Englanders,  under 
Colonel  John  Winslow  of  Massa- 
chusetts. Acting  by  order  of  the 
English  governor,  they  gathered  the 
people  together,  drove  them  aboard 
ship  and  distributed  them  among  the 
Atlantic  colonies  from  Massachusetts 
to  Georgia.  Parkman,  in  Montcalm 
and  Wolfe  (1885),  asserts  that  Long- 


fellow and  even  Haliburton,  the 
historian  of  Nova  Scotia,  trusted  for 
their  facts  to  Abbe  Raynol,  who  never 
saw  the  Acadians,  and  who  "  has 
made  an  ideal  picture  of  them,  since 
copied  and^  improved  in  prose  and 
verse,  until  Acadia  has  become 
Arcadia." 

Acaste,  in  Moli^re's  comedy  Le 
Misanthrope,  a  self-satisfied  young 
marquis,  who  easily  consoles  himself 
when  his  suit  is  scorned  by  Celimene. 

Achitophel,  in  Dryden's  poetical 
satire  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  is 
meant  for  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury 
( 1 621-1683).  He  was  thus  nick- 
named by  his  contemporaries  because 
of  the  resemblance  in  character  and 
career  between  him  and  Achitophel 
or  Ahitophel,  the  treacherous  friend 
and  counsellor  of  David,  and  the 
fellow  conspirator  of  Absalom  (II 
Samuel  xv).  The  poem  was  written 
at  a  critical  juncture  in  public  affairs 
(see  Absalom).  Shaftesbury,  who 
had  opposed  the  succession  of  the 
Duke  of  York  (afterwards  James  II) 
to  his  brother  Charles  II  and  favored 
that  of  the  illegitimate  Duke  of 
Monmouth,  was  then  in  the  Tower 
awaiting  trial  for  high  treason.  Dry- 
den,  assuming  that  Shaftesbury  had 
nearly  precipitated  a  civil  war,  found 
in  Achitophel's  relation  to  Absalom 
a  Biblical  parable  sufficiently  close 
for  his  purpose. 

Acrasia,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene, 
an  enchantress  personifying  intem- 
perance, who  dwells  in  the  Bower  of 
Bliss. 

Aerates,  in  The  Purple  Island,  an 
allegorical  poem  by  Phineas  Fletcher, 
the  personification  of  Incontinence 
and  the  father  of  Gluttony  and 
Drunkenness. 

AcreS)  Bob,  in  Sheridan's  comedy, 
The  Rivals  (1775),  is,  with  Captain 
Absolute,  one  of  the  eponymic  rivals 
for  the  hand  of  Lydia  Languish.  An 
ill-compounded  mixture  of  the  coun- 
try squire  and  the  London  man  about 
town  (a  degenerate  type  of  the  first 
and  a  pinchbeck  imitation  of  the 
second),  he  is  redeemed  from  igno- 
miny only  by  native  kindliness  and 
good  nature.   He  wears  flashy  clothes, 


Acunha 


Adamastor 


affects  a  bombastic  swagger  to  cover 
his  ludicrous  cowardice  and  invents 
for  himself  a  strange  vocabulary  of 
harmless  profanity  which  he  calls  the 
oath  sentimental  or  referential. 

Acunha,  Teresa  d',in  Scott's  novel, 
The  Antiquary,  a  Spanish  servant  of 
the  Coimtess  of  Glenallan,  who  aided 
Edward  Geraldin  Neville  in  carrying 
off  the  new-bom  child  of  Eveline 
Neville.  "  If  ever  there  was  a  fiend 
on  earth  in  human  form,  that  woman 
was  one." 

Ada,  to  whom  Byron  in  Childe 
Harold  addressed  the  invocation: 

Ada!  sole  daughter  of  my  house  and  heart. 
Canto  iii,  Stanza  i. 

was  the  Hon.  Augusta  Ada  Byron, 
the  poet's  only  legitimate  child  (1815- 
1852),  who  in  1835  married  William 
King  Noel,  afterwards  Earl  of  Love- 
lace. Unlike  her  father  in  feature  and 
in  the  bent  of  her  mind,  which  was 
towards  mathematics  rather  than 
poetry,  she  inherited  something  of 
his  mental  vigor  and  intensity.  Like 
him,  too,  she  died  in  her  thirty- 
seventh  year.  At  her  own  request 
her  cofifin  was  placed  by  his  in  the 
vault  at  Hucknall  Torkard.  Thus  it 
is  evident  that  Byron  realized  his 
aspiration  in  Stanza  cxvii  of  the 
same  canto. 

Yet,  though  dull  Hate  as  duty  should  be 

taught, 
I  know  that  thou  wilt  love  me, — though  my 

name 
Should  be  shut  from  thee,  as  a  spell  still 

fraught 
With  desolation,  and  a  broken  claim: 
Though    the    grave    closed    between    us, — 

'twere  the  same — 
I  know  that  thou  wilt  love  me — though  to 

drain 
My  blood  from  out  thy  being  were  an  aim. 
And  an  attainment, — all  would  be  in  vain, — 
Still  thou  would'st  love  me,  still  that  more 

than  life  retain. 

Adah,  the  name  which  Lord  Byron 
in  Cain,  a  Mystery,  bestows  upon  the 
wife  of  Cain,  explaining  that  he  does 
so  because  Adah  is  the  first  female 
name  to  be  met  with  in  the  Old 
Testament  (with  the  exception  of 
Eve),  being  that  of  the  wife  of  La- 
mech  (Genesis  iv,  19). 

He  paints  her  as  a  gentle  wife  and 


a  devoted  mother.  It  is  curious  that 
Rabbinical  tradition  gives  her  the 
very  name  that  Byron  stumbled  on 
by  accident.  Adah's  reputed  grave 
is  at  Aboncais,  a  moimtain  in  Arabia. 
Adam,  in  Shakespeare's  ^4^  You 
Like  It,  the  aged  fanuly  servant  who 
casts  his  lot  with  Orlando  when  this, 
the  younger  of  his  masters,  is  exiled 
from  court.  He  is  a  fine  picture  of 
healthy  minded  and  generous  old  age. 
As  he  himself  says: 

My  age  is  Uke  a  lusty  winter 
Frosty,  but  kindly. 

There  is  a  tradition — supported 
by  two  of  Shakespeare's  editors  who 
sought  for  their  facts  in  Stratford — 
that  Shakespeare  used  to  play  this 
part.  Oldys  tells  us  that  in  his  day 
he  had  met  people  who  had  known 
Shakespeare's  brother  in  extreme  old 
age. 

All  that  could  be  recollected  from  him  of 
his  brother  Will,  was  the  faint  general  and 
almost  lost  ideas  he  had  of  having  once  seen 
him  act  a  part  in  one  of  his  own  comedies 
wherein  being  to  personate  a  decrepit  old 
man,  he  wore  a  long  beard,  and  appeared  so 
weak  and  drooping  and  unable  to  walk,  that 
he  was  forced  to  be  supported  and  carried 
by  another  person  to  a  table,  at  which  he 
was  seated  among  some  company  who  were 
eating,  and  one  of  them  sang  a  song. 

This  obviously  refers  to  As  You  Like 
It,  Act  ii,  Sc.  6  and  7. 

Adam,  in  Arthur  Hugh  Clough's 
poem.  The  Bothie  of  Tober-na-  Vuolich 
(1848),  a  nickname  for  the  college 
tutor,  probably  intended  as  a  portrait 
of  the  author  himself. 

The  grave  man,  nicknamed  Adam, 
White-tied,    clerical,    silent,    with    antique 

square-cut  waistcoat. 
Formal,  unchanged,  of  black  cloth,  but  with 

sense  and  feeling  beneath  it. 

Adamastor,  "  the  spirit  of  the 
Cape  "  in  Camoens'  Lusiad,  v  (1569). 
a  hideous  monster  guarding  the  Cape 
of  Tempests — now  known  as  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope — who  appears 
to  Vasco  da  Gama  to  warn  him  that 
he  trespassed  at  his  own  risk  on 
waters  hitherto  unvisited  by  man. 
The  description  of  this  monster  has 
been  greatly  admired.  These  are 
the  crucial  lines: 


Adamlda 


6 


Adam-zad 


An   earthly    paleness    o'er   his    cheek    was 

spread, 
Erect  arose  his  hairs  of  withered  red; 
Writhing  to  speak,  his  sable  lips  disclose, 
Sharp  and  disjoined,  his  gnashing  teeth's 

blue  rows. 
His  haggard  beard  flowed  quivering  on  the 

wind, 
Revenge  and  horror  in  his  mien  combined; 
His  clouded  front  by  withering  lightnings 

scarred 
The  inward  anguish  of  his  soul  declared. 
His  red  eyes,  glowing  from  their  dusky  caves, 
Shot  livid  fires  far-echoing  o'er  the  waves; 
His  voice  resounded,  as  the  cavemed  shore 
With  hollow  groan  repeats  the  tempest's 

roar. 

"In  me  behold,"  he  cried. 
While  dark-red  sparkles  from  his  eyeballs 

rolled, 
"In  me  the  Spirit  of  the  Cape  behold. 
That  rock  by  you  the  Cape  of  Tempests 

named, 
By  Neptune's  rage,  in  horrid  earthquakes 

framed, 
When  Jove's  red  bolts  o'er  Titan's  offspring 

flamed. 
With  wide-stretched  piles  I  guard  the  path- 
less strand." 

Adamida,  a  planet  invented  by 
Klopstock  in  The  Messiah,  Bk.  viii 
(1771),  to  play  an  important  part  in 
the  crucifixion.  It  is  described  as  a 
spot  whereon  reside  the  unborn  spirits 
of  saints  and  martyrs  and  other 
humbler  forms  of  true  believers. 
When  the  crucial  moment  occurs  on 
Calvary,  Uriel,  angel  of  the  Sun,  is 
despatched  by  the  Almighty  with  a 
message  to  the  planet  (personified 
for  the  occasion)  that  she  should 
place  herself  between  the  sim  and 
the  earth  in  such  fashion  as  to  cause 
a  total  eclipse.  "  Adamida,  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  divine  command,  flew 
amidst  overwhelming  storms,  rushing 
clouds,  falling  mountains,  and  swel- 
ling seas.  Uriel  stood  on  the  pole  of 
the  star,  but  so  lost  in  deep  contem- 
plation on  Golgotha,  that  he  heard 
not  the  wild  uproar.  On  coming  to 
the  region  of  the  sun,  Adamida  slack- 
ened her  course,  and  advancing  before 
the  Sim,  covered  its  face  and  inter- 
cepted all  its  rays." 

Adams,  Parson  Abraham,  in  Henry 
Fielding's  novel,  Joseph  Andrews 
(1742),  an  eccentric  and  amiable 
country  curate,  supposed  to  have 
been  drawn  from  the  author's  friend, 
the  Rev.  William  Young,  who  revised 
Ains worth's  Latin  Dictionaiy  in  1752. 
Deep  read  in  books,  he  is  utterly 


ignorant  of  the  world;  easily  duped, 
and  little  disposed  to  anger  on  his 
own  account,  he  is  yet  a  formidable 
champion  for  the  rights  of  others, 
especially  the  weak  and  the  innocent. 
Joseph  Andrews  in  the  novel  calls 
him  "  the  best  man  I  ever  knew." 
Sir  Walter  Scott  considers  the  char- 
acter "  one  of  the  richest  productions 
of  the  Muse  of  Fiction."  Hazlitt 
gives  it  the  preference  above  all 
Fielding's  creations:  "It  is  equally 
true  to  nature,  and  more  ideal  than 
any  of  the  others.  Its  unsuspecting 
simplicity  makes  it  not  only  more 
amiable,  but  doubly  amusing,  by 
gratifying  the  sense  of  superior 
sagacity  in  the  reader.  Our  laughing 
at  him  does  not  once  lessen  our 
respect  for  him." 

As  to  Parson  Adams  and  his  fist,  and  his 
good  heart,  and  his  ^schylus  which  he 
couldn't  see  to  read,  and  his  rejoicing  at 
being  delivered  from  a  ride  in  the  carriage 
with  Mr.  Peter  Pounce,  whom  he  had 
erroneously  complimented  on  the  smallness 
of  his  parochial  means,  let  every  body 
rejoice  that  there  has  been  a  man  in  the 
world  called  Henry  Fielding  to  think  of 
such  a  character,  and  thousands  of  good 
people  sprinkled  about  that  world  to  answer 
for  the  truth  of  it;  for  had  there  not  been, 
what  would  have  been  its  value?  .  .  . 
He  is  one  of  the  simplest,  but  at  the  same 
time  manliest  of  men;  is  anxious  to  read  a 
man  of  the  world  his  sermon  on  "vanity;" 
preaches  patience  under  affliction,  and  is 
ready  to  lose  his  senses  on  the  death  of  his 
little  boy;  in  short,  has  "every  virtue  under 
heaven,"  except  that  of  superiority  to  the 
common  failings  of  humanity,  or  of  being 
able  to  resist  knocking  a  rascal  down  when 
he  insults  the  innocent.  He  is  very  poor, 
and,  agreeably  to  the  notions  of  refinement 
in  those  days,  is  treated  by  the  rich  as  if 
he  were  little  better  than  a  servant  himself. 
Even  their  stewards  think  it  a  condescen- 
sion to  treat  him  on  equal  terms. — Leigh 
Hunt. 

Adam-zad,  in  Kipling's  poem.  The 
Truce  of  the  Bear  (1898),  a  personifi- 
cation of  Russia.  The  blind  beggar 
Matzun,  eyeless,  noseless,  lipless,  bids 
the  white  men  show  no  mercy  when 
they  "go  by  the  pass  Muttiance  to 
shoot  in  the  vale  below."  He  tells 
how  after  a  long  hunt  "  Adam-zad, 
the  bear  that  walks  like  a  man,"  had 
feigned  exhaustion  and  begged^  for 
mercy;  how  Matzun  had  restrained 
his  fire  and  how  the  bear  tottering 
nearer  with  a  single  blow — 


Adlcia 


Adonais 


From  brow  to  jaw,  the  steel-shod  paw, 
It  ripped  my  face  away. 

The  poem  was  written  at  the  time 
Czar  Nicholas  II  proposed  the  Peace 
Congress  and  the  disarmament  of  all 
the  powers. 

Adlcia,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene 
(1596)  V.  8,  wife  of  a  soldan  whom  she 
incites  to  distress  Mercilla's  kingdom. 
Mercilla's  ambassador,  Samient,  is 
sent  to  arrange  a  peace;  is  ignomin- 
iously  thrust  out  of  doors,  and  two 
knights  are  set  upon  her.  Ill  would 
it  have  fared  with  the  lady  diplomat 
but  that  the  good  knight  Artegal 
comes  to  the  rescue,  defeats  the 
assailants,  and  disarms  Adicia  of  a 
knife  with  which  she  rushes  at  Sami- 
ent. Adicia  is  metamorphosed  into 
a  tigress.  The  intended  allegory  is 
aimed  at  Philip  II  of  Spain,  prefigured 
by  the  soldan.  Adicia  is  "papist" 
bigotry;  Mercilla,  Queen  Elizabeth; 
and  Samient  is  a  composite  of  certain 
ambassadors  to  Holland,  who,  seek- 
ing peace  from  Philip,  were  by  him 
detained  as  prisoners  in  defiance  of 
international  law. 

Adlerkron,  Rupert  Von,  hero  of  a 
novel,  Cyrilla  (1853),  by  the  Baroness 
Tautphoeus. 

I  happened  to  say  that  I  thought  Rupert 
von  Adlerkron  at  once  the  most  heroic  and 
most  lovable  of  modem  imaginary  heroes. 
"But,"  I  added,  laughing,  "you  have  much 
to  answer  for  in  putting  forth  such  an  im- 
possibly delightful  ideal.  How  many  girls 
must  have  fallen  hopelessly  in  love  with 
Rupert;  and  you  know  that  your  conscience 
must  make  you  say,  with  lago,  'There  is 
no  such  man!'"  I  saw  her  glance  at  a 
miniature  which  hung  on  the  wall.  It 
represented  an  officer  in  Bavarian  uniform, 
with  brown  hair  and  mustache,  and  beau- 
tiful dark  blue  eyes.  I  knew  it  was  her 
husband's  portrait,  and  ventured  to  say 
that  I  had  always  imagined  he  must  have 
been  something  like  Rupert. 

"Well,"  she  answered,  with  a  sad  smile, 
"in  his  courage,  and  the  equability  and 
brightness  of  his  temperament,  he  was  like 
Rupert.  In  the  forty-eight  years  we  lived 
together,  I  never  had  an  angry  word  from 
him." — Baroness  Tautphoeus,  an  interview, 
Atlantic  Monthly,  July.  1894. 

Admirable  Crichton  (see  Chrich- 
ton). 

Adolphe,  hero  and  title  of  a  novel 
(18 1 6)  by  Benjamin  Constant, 
founded  upon  the  author's  liaison  with 
Madame   de   Stael.     Adolphe   is   a 


proud,  reserved,  sensitive  and  rather 
feeble  youth,  a  product  of  the  age  of 
Ren6  and  Werther;  the  victim  alike 
of  culture  and  ennui — culture  without 
a  purpose  and  ennui  without  a  cause. 
Partly  urged  by  restless  vanity, 
partly  in  hopes  of  gaining  an  object 
in  life,  he  deliberately  decides  to  fall 
in  love.  He  selects  Ellenore,  a  Polish 
lady,  the  acknowledged  mistress  of 
the  Count  de  P.,  who  in  her  equivocal 
position  has  borne  herself  with  such 
single-hearted  devotion  as  to  win  a 
certain  position.  He  deliberately  lays 
siege  to  her,  she  struggles,  and  finally 
succumbs  to  an  overwhelming  passion. 
He,  poor  man,  had  contemplated  only 
a  brief  liaison  but  his  sense  of  honor 
will  not  allow  him  to  desert  Ellenore 
after  he  wearies  of  her.  He  even  gives 
up  his  family,  blasts  all  his  worldly 
prospects,  and  follows  the  lady  to 
Poland.  At  last  she  learns  the  truth; 
it  proves  her  death  blow,  leaving 
Adolphe  prostrated  by  suffering  and 
remorse. 

Adon-Ai,  in  Lytton's  romance 
Zanoni,  a  mysterious  spirit  of  love 
and  beauty  apparently  typifying  piu-e 
intellect. 

Adonais,  the  name  under  which 
Shelley  laments  his  friend  Keats 
(1796-1821)  in  Adonais,  an  Elegy  on 
the  Death  of  John  Keats  (1821).  It 
begins: 

I  weep  for  Adonais,  he  is  dead! 
Oh  weep  for  Adonais!  though  our  tears 
Thaw  not  the  frost  which  binds  so  dear  « 
head! 

Shelley  borrowed  the  name  from 
the  title  of  an  elegy  on  the  death  of 
Adonis,  written  by  Bion,  a  bucolic 
poet  who  flourished  about  B.C.  280. 
Bion's  poem  is  called  Adonais.  This 
is  properly  an  adjective  meaning 
"  of  "  or  "  belonging  to  Adonis," 
but  Shelley  has  wrenched  the  word 
from  its  original  use  and  made  it  a 
proper  noun.  As  to  his  own  poem, 
Shelley  was  deeply  stirred  by  the 
opinion,  since  discredited,  but  then 
very  generally  entertained,  that 
Keats's  untimely  death  was  the 
result  of  a  brutal  criticism  of  Endy- 
mion  in  the  Quarterly  Review. 
Shelley's  lament  is  for  the  poet,  not 


Adonbeck  el  Hakim 


8 


Agape 


the  man  (whom  he  barely  knew),  and 
for  the  loss  that  poetry,  not  Shelley 
himself,  had  sustained. 

Adonbeck  el  Hakim,  in  Scott's 
historical  romance,  The  Talisman, 
the  name  assumed  by  Saladin  when 
he  visited  Sir  Kenneth's  squire  as  a 
doctor. 

Adosinda,  in  Southey's  epic  Roder- 
ick, the  Last  of  the  Goths  (1814),  the 
daughter  of  the  Gothic  governor  of 
Auria  in  Spain.  Her  husband  and 
child  having  been  massacred  by  the 
Moors,  she  dedicates  herself  to  the 
work  of  Uberating  and  avenging 
Spain.  Being  assigned  to  the  captain 
of  Alcahan's  regiment,  she  murders 
him  in  his  sleep  and  escapes  by  the 
assistance  of  Roderick  in  his  disguise 
as  a  monk.  In  the  great  battle  that 
resulted  in  the  overthrow  of  the 
Moors  (Canto  iii )  she  gave  the 
word  of  attack, "  Victory  and  Ven- 
geance! " 

Adraste,  hero  of  Moh^re's  comedy, 
Le  SicUien  ou  V Amour  Peintre  (1667), 
from  whose  disguise  as  an  artist  comes 
the  sub-title  of  the  piece. 

Adrastus,  in  Tasso's  Jerusalem  De- 
livered, an  Indian  prince  from  the 
Ganges,  an  ally  of  the  king  of  Egypt 
against  the  Christians.  He  rode  an 
elephant  and  wore  a  serpent  skin. 
In  Book  XX  he  is  slain  by  Rinaldo. 
There  is  no  historical  basis  for  this 
character.  Adrastus  of  Helvetia  was 
the  name  of  one  of  the  Crusaders. 

Adriana,  in  Shakespeare's  Comedy 
of  Errors,  the  wife  of  Antipholus  of 
Ephesus. 

Adriel,  in  Dryden's  satirical  poem 
Absalom  and  Achitophel,  is  intended 
for  John  Sheffield,  Earl  of  Mulgrave 
(1649- 1 721),  author  of  an  Essay  on 
Poetry: 

Sharp- judging  Adriel,  the  Muses'  friend; 
Himself  a  muse.    In  sanhedrim's  debate 
True  to  his  prince,  but  not  a  slave  to  state; 
Whom  David's  love  with  honours  did  adorn, 
That  from  his  disobedient  son  were  torn. 

Part  i,  838,  etc. 

iEgeon,  in  Shakespeare's  Comedy 
of  Errors,  a  merchant  of  Syracuse. 
See  ^Emilia. 

^lla,  hero  of  a  tragedy  of  that 
name  by  Thomas  Chatterton,   the 


most  elaborate  of  the  Rowley 
forgeries. 

.ffimilia,  the  lady  Abbess  in  Shake- 
speare's Comedy  of  Errors  (1593).  A 
shipwreck  had  separated  her  from 
her  husband,  .^geon,  and  her  twin 
sons,  both  -named  Antipholus.  At 
Ephesus,  whither  she  was  taken,  she 
entered  a  convent  and  became  abbess. 
One  of  her  sons  likewise  settled  in 
Ephesus,  and,  all  unknown  to  her, 
was  one  of  its  wealthiest  citizens.  It 
happened  that  the  other  son  and 
iiEgeon  simultaneously,  but  without 
knowledge  of  each  other,  arrived  in 
Ephesus,  occasioning  many  complica- 
tions imtil  the  matter  was  set  right 
at  the  duke's  court,  where  the  family 
were  reunited. 

JStion,  a  character  in  Spenser's 
pastoral,  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home 
Again  (159 1),  usually  believed  to  be 
intended  for  Shakespeare: 

And  there,  though  last,  not  least,  is  iCtion: 
A    gentler    shepherd    may  nowhere   be 
found. 
Whose  Muse,  full  of  high  thought's  inven- 
tion, 
Doth  like  himself  heroically  sound. 

In  similar  vein  Fuller  speaks  of  the 
poet  as  "  martial  in  the  warlike 
sound  of  his  surname,  whence  some 
may  conjecture  him  of  miHtary  extrac- 
tion, hasti-vibrans  or  Shake-spear." — 
Worthies  of  Warwickshire  (1662). 

Fleay,  Todd  and  others  believe 
the  name  refers  to  Drayton,  who 
published  his  Idea  in  1593,  and  his 
Idea's  Mirrour  in  1594.  "  What 
more  natural,"  asks  Fleay,  "  than  to 
indicate  Drayton  by  iEtion,  which 
is  the  synonym  of  Idea?" 

The  original  ^tion  (4th  century 
B.C.)  was  a  Greek  painter  famed  for 
his  picture  of  Alexander  the  Great's 
marriage. 

Agape,  in  Edmund  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene,  a.  fairy  who,  having  been 
delivered  of  triplets — Priamond,  Dia- 
mond, and  Triamond — visited  the 
abyss  of  Demogorgon  to  consult  the 
three  fates  as  to  what  the  future  held 
for  her  sons.  Clotho  showed  her 
that  the  threads  of  their  lives  were  as 
thin  as  those  spun  by  a  spider.  Agape 
begged  the  sisters  at  least  to  lengthen 


Agatha 

the  life  threads,  but  they  could  only 
be  urged  to  a  compromise: 

When  ye  shred  with  fatal  knife 
His  line  which  is  the  shortest  of  the  three, 
Eftsoon  his  life  may  pass  into  the  next; 
And  when  the  next  shall  likewise  ended  be, 
That  both  their  lives  may  Ukewise  be  annext 
Unto  the  third,  that  his  may  be  so  trebly 

wext. 

Spenser:  Faerie  Queene,  iv,  2  (1590). 

Agatha,  heroine  of  a  poem  of  that 
name  by  George  Eliot. 

Aged  P.,  i.e.,  Aged  Parent  in 
Dickens's  novel,  Great  Expectations 
(i860),  the  nickname  under  which 
Wemmick  playfully  alluded  to  his 
father,  who  Hved  with  him  at  the 
castle  at  Walworth,  was  very  deaf 
and  very  proud  of  his  son. 

Agnes,  in  Moliere's  comedy  L'Ecole 
des  Femmes  (The  School  for  Wives),  a 
tjrpical  ingenue,  simple,  ignorant  and 
spotless,  whose  name  has  passed  into 
the  French  language  as  a  synonym 
for  girUsh  innocence,  real  or  pretended. 
Amolphe,  her  guardian,  has  brought 
her  up  as  his  future  wife  on  the  theory 
that  "  extreme  ignorance "  is  the 
only  safeguard  for  maiden  virtue  and 
that  all  she  needs  to  know  is  '*  to 
pray,  to  love  me,  to  sew  and  to  spin." 
She  develops  all  the  transparent  sim- 
plicity of  Miranda,  although  Shake- 
speare's more  poetic  theme  imposed 
upon  him  a  more  imaginative  treat- 
ment of  a  similar  condition  and  char- 
acter. Honest  and  openhearted,  she 
is  frankly  inquisitive  about  matters 
she  does  not  imderstand,  pushes  her 
ignorance  to  ridiculous  extremes, 
rejoices  with  candid  delight  in  the 
mere  experience  of  being  wooed,  and 
is  utterly  unable  to  understand 
Amolphe's  sufferings.  SeeARNOLPHE, 
Celimene,  Pinchwife. 

Aguecheek,  Sir  Andrew,  in  Shake- 
speare's comedy,  Twelfth  Night  (1599). 
a  "straight-haired  coimtry  squire" 
in  love  with  Olivia.  A  shrill,  fantastic 
figure,  he  is  an  embodiment  of  com- 
placent fatuity,  ever  ready  to  retail 
maundering  experiences  that  interest 
nobody  and  to  verify  his  own  char- 
acter as  "  one  whom  many  do  call 
fool."  In  the  duel  scene  with  Viola, 
whom  he  imagines  his  rival  with 
Olivia,  Shakespeare  has  given  the  hint 


9 ^y 

which  Sheridan  utiUzed  in  Bob  Acres. 
Viola  is  afraid  of  Aguecheek,  but 
Aguecheek  is  still  more  afraid  of  her. 
Sir  Toby  Belch  urges  them  both  on; 
luckily  the  duel  is  interrupted. 

Ah  Sin,  hero  of  Bret  Harte's  humor- 
ous poem  known  famiUarly  as  The 
Heathen  Chinee,  but  originally  pub- 
lished tmder  the  title  Plain  Language 
from  Truthful  James  (1870).  There 
is  rnuch  htunor  in  the  quiet  undertone 
of  incredulous  surprise  and  outraged 
moral  feehng  with  which  the  Pacific 
coast  gambler  discovers  that  the 
mild-looking  cooUe  is  as  great  a 
rogue  and  cheat  as  himself.  With 
the  assistance  of  Mark  Twain,  Bret 
Harte  in  1880  produced  a  play 
entitled  "  Ah  Sin." 

Aiglon,  L'  (Fr.  the  eaglet),  a  name 
first  given  by  Victor  Hugo  to  Napo- 
leon II,  i.e.,  the  Duke  of  Reichstadt, 
son  of  Napoleon  I  and  Marie  Louise. 
Edmond  Rostand  took  it  as  the  title 
of  a  play  (1900)  of  which  this  unfortu- 
nate lad  is  the  hero.  Brought  up 
under  the  influence  of  Mettemich  at 
the  Austrian  court,  every  effort  is 
made  to  keep  him  in  ignorance  of  his 
father's  achievements  and  of  the 
possibihties  that  he  before  him.  In 
spite  of  this  he  learns  all.  He 
attempts  flight,  but  his  fellow  con- 
spirators are  scattered  on  the  field 
of  Wagram  and  he  himself  is  taken 
back  to  die  in  Vienna. 

Aimwell,  Thomas,  Viscount,  in  The 
Beaux  Stratagem,  a  comedy  by  George 
Farquhar.  Aimwell  is  a  bankrupt 
nobleman  who  joins  his  friend, 
Francis  Archer,  in  redeeming  their 
fortimes  by  stratagem.  They  appear 
in  Lichfield  as  master  and  valet. 
Aimwell  feigns  to  be  ill  and  works  on 
the  sympathies  of  Lady  Bountiful, 
who,  true  to  her  name  and  character, 
removes  him  to  her  own  house.  Here 
Dorinda,  her  daughter,  falls  in  love 
with  him  and  he  wins  her  as  his  bride. 
Archer  meanwhile  prosecutes  an 
intrigue  with  a  married  woman,  the 
wife  of  Squire  Sullen,  reaping  nothing 
but  temporary  amusement. 

Airy,  Sir  George,  in  The  Busybody 
(1709),  a  comedy  by  Mrs.  Centlivre, 
a   young   gentleman,  gay,  generous 


Alastor 


10 


Alcina 


and  gallant,  possessing  a  further 
virtue  in  an  income  of  £4,000  a  year, 
the  wooer  of  Miranda. 

Alastor,  the  tutelary  spirit  in 
Shelley's  Alastor,  or  the  Spirit  of  Soli- 
tude, who  drives  the  hero,  evidently 
meant  for  Shelley  himself,  far  from 
the  haunts  of  men  in  wild  pursuit  of 
an  unattainable  ideal  that  had  been 
vaguely  hinted  to  him  in  dreams.  He 
crosses  the  Balkans  and  the  steppes 
of  southern  Russia.  Using  his  cloak 
as  a  sail,  he  drives  a  small  boat  up 
one  of  the  rivers  that  flow  down  from 
the  Caucasus,  his  hair  turning  gray 
all  the  time,  and  finally  dies  in  a  spot 
of  apparently  impossible  geography. 
The  title  of  the  poem  is  said  to  have 
been  suggested  to  Shelley  by  his 
friend  T.  L.  Peacock,  who  "  was 
amused,"  says  Robert  Buchanan,  "  to 
the  day  of  his  death  by  the  fact  that 
the  pubhc,  and  even  the  critics,  per- 
sisted in  asstiming  Alastor  to  be  the 
name  of  the  hero  of  the  poem,  whereas 
the  Greek  word  'AXdarup  signifies 
*  an  evil  genius,'  and  the  evil  genius 
depicted  in  the  poem  is  the  Spirit  of 
Solitude." 

Albert,  in  Knowles'  drama.  The 
Beggar  of  Bethnal  Green,  the  assimied 
name  of  Lord  Wilfrid. 

Albion,  in  Dryden's  opera  of  Al- 
bion and  Albinus  (1685),  represents 
Charles  II  as  Albinus  represents  his 
brother,  the  Duke  of  York,  after- 
wards James  II.  While  the  opera 
was  actually  in  rehearsal  the  original 
of  Albion  died.  It  was  produced, 
Downes  says,  "  on  a  very  unlucky 
day,  being  the  day  the  Duke  of 
Monmouth  landed  in  the  west." 

Albovine,  hero  of  Sir  William 
Davenant's  Albovine,  King  of  the 
Lombards  (1629).  He  marries  Rho- 
dolinda,  but  shocks  her  on  the  wed- 
ding day  by  drinking  out  of  the 
ski^  of  her  dead  father.  She  in- 
trigues with  Paradine  and  incites 
him  to  slay  the  king.  Paradine  be- 
trays the  plot.  Albovine  fights  a  duel 
with  Paradine  and  allows  himself  to 
be  slain,  whereupon  the  victor  im- 
molates RhodoUnda.  The  story  is 
obviously  taken  with  only  a  sfight 
change  of  proper  names  from  that  of 


Alboin  and  Rosmimda.  See  Ros- 
MUNDA  in  vol.  II. 

Albumazar  (the  name  is  that  of  a 
famous  Persian  astronomer,  776-885), 
hero  of  a  comedy  so  entitled  (1606) 
which  Thomas  Tomkis  founded  upon 
L'Astrologo  of  G.  B.  Delia  Porta. 
Dryden,  in  a  prologue  written  for  a 
revival  of  this  play  (1668),  accused 
Ben  Jonson  of  having  plagiarized  his 
Alchemist  from  Albumazar.  The 
plot  of  Tomkis 's  play  turns  upon  the 
complications  arising  from  the  fact 
that  Albumazar  has  metamorphosed 
Trincalo  into  Antonio.    See  Subtle. 

Alceste,  hero  of  Moli^re's  comedy, 
The  Misanthrope,  a  cynic  whose 
originally  generous,  impulsive  and 
sensitive  natxire,  soured  by  contact 
with  the  coldness,  artificiality  and 
insincerity  of  conventional  society, 
has  encrusted  itself  behind  an  appear- 
ance of  callous  brutality.  Alceste  is 
the  Hamlet  of  artificial  eighteenth 
century  France,  a  Hamlet  drawn  by 
an  observer  who  keeps  a  keen  eye 
upon  the  humorous  possibilities  of 
the  character.  Like  Hamlet,  too, 
his  creator  looked  into  his  owii  heart 
to  write.  Alceste  has  much  in  com- 
mon with  Moli^re  himself.  Other 
originals  have  been  suggested,  espe- 
cially the  Duke  de  Montaussier,  who 
in  his  native  kindliness  and  acquired 
moroseness  resembled  both  MoH^re 
and  his  hero.  The  duke,  being  in- 
formed that  this  portrait  had  been 
drawn  by  MoHere,  went  to  see  the 
play  and  only  said,  "  I  have  no  ill 
will  against  Moli^re,  for  the  original 
of  Alceste,  whoever  it  is,  must  be  a 
fine  character  since  the  portrait  is 
one." 

Molifere  exhibited  in  his  Misanthrope  a 
pure  and  noble  mind  which  had  been  sorely 
vexed  by  the  sight  of  perfidy  and  malev- 
olence disguised  under  the  forms  of  polite- 
ness. He  adopts  a  standard  of  good  and 
evil  directly  opposed  to  that  of  the  society 
which  surrounded  him.  Courtesy  seems  to 
him  to  be  a  vice,  and  those  stern  virtues 
which  are  neglected  by  the  fops  and  co- 
quettes of  Paris  become  too  exclusively  the 
objects  of  veneration.  He  is  often  to  blame, 
he  is  often  ridiculous,  but  he  is  always  a 
good  man. — Macaulay  Essays.  Comic 
Dramatists  of  the  Restoration. 

Alcina,  a  personification  of  carnal 
licentiousness  or  sensuality.    Bojardo 


Alciphron 


11 


Alfarata 


introduces  her  into  Orlando  Inna- 
morato  as  a  seductive  fairy  who  carries 
off  Astolfo.  Ariosto,  in  Orlando  Fur- 
ioso,  paints  her  in  darker  colors  as  a 
later  Circe,  hving  in  an  enchanted 
garden  whither  she  decoys  her  lovers, 
and,  after  a  brief  season,  converts 
them  at  her  own  will  into  trees, 
stones  or  brutes. 

Alciphron,  the  chief  character  in 
Alciphron  or  the  Minute  Philosopher 
(1735).  by  Bishop  George  Berkeley, 
a  dialogue  on  the  model  of  Plato 
"  written  with  the  intention  to  expose 
the  weakness  of  infidelity,"  and  espe- 
cially directed  against  the  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury.  The  original  Alciphron 
was  a  Greek  rhetorician  who  flour- 
ished about  the  second  century  a.d. 
His  chief  literary  remains  are  three 
books  of  letters  which  profess  to  be 
written  by  peasants,  fishermen,  cour- 
tesans and  parasites. 

Alciphron,  hero  of  The  Epicurean 
(1837),  a  prose  romance  by  Thomas 
Moore,  a  Greek  youth  brought  up  in 
the  Epicurean  school  of  philosophy 
who  goes  to  Memphis  in  search  of  the 
priestly  mysteries  and  there  becomes 
enamoured  of  a  young  Christian  girl, 
and  the  hero  is  thus  introduced  to 
"  the  secret  religion  "  which  he  joins. 
This  is  a  prose  amplification  of  a  poem 
of  the  same  name  by  the  same  author. 

Aldegonde,  Lord  St.,  in  Benjamin 
Disraeli's  novel  Lothair  (1870),  a 
clever,  witty  and  agreeable  young 
nobleman  into  whose  mouth  the 
author  puts  some  of  his  most  success- 
ful epigrams.  Though  son  and  heir 
of  a  duke  he  is  "  a  republican  of  the 
deepest  dye  "  and  is  "  opposed  to  all 
privileges  and  all  orders  of  men  except 
dukes,  who  were  a  necessity." 

Bored  with  the  emptiness  of  an  existence 
which  he  knows  not  how  to  amend,  a  man 
who  in  other  times  might  have  ridden  be- 
side King  Richard  at  Ascalon,  or  charged 
with  the  Black  Prince  at  Poitiers,  he  lounges 
through  life  in  good-humored  weariness  of 
amusements  which  will  not  amuse,  and  out- 
rages conventionalism  by  his  frank  con- 
tempt for  humbug.  ...  A  perfect 
apecimen  of  a  young  English  noble,  who  will 
not  cant  or  lie;  the  wisest  and  truest  when 
council  or  action  is  needed  of  him,  yet  with 
his  fine  qualities  all  running  to  waste  in  a 
world  where  there  !■  no  employment  for 
them. 


Alden,  John  (1599-1687),  one  of 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  a  cooper  who 
came  over  in  the  Mayflower,  settled 
at  Duxbury,  and  married  Priscilla 
Mullens.  According  to  an  accredited 
tradition,  versified  by  Longfellow  in 
The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish, 
Alden  was  deputed  by  Captain 
Standish  to  win  the  maiden  for  him, 
but  she  gave  John  to  imderstand  that 
he  had  better  woo  for  himself — and  he 
took  the  hint.   See  Standish,  Miles. 

Aldiborontiphoscophomio,  a  cour- 
tier in  Henry  Carey's  burlesque 
drama,    Chrononhotonthologos  (1734). 

Sir  Walter  Scott  used  to  call  James 
Ballantyne,  the  printer,  this  nick- 
name, from  his  pomposity  and  for- 
mality of  speech. 

Aldrick,  in  Scott's  Peveril  of  the 
Peak,  the  Jesuit  confessor  to  the 
Coimtess  of  Derby. 

Aleshine,  Mrs.    See  Lecks,  Mrs. 

Alexander  the  Great  has  figured  in 
ntunerous  modem  dramas.  The 
most  notable  examples  in  English 
literature  are:  (i)  Alexander  and 
Campaspe  (158 1),  by  John  Lyly; 
(2)  The  Rival  Queens  (1677),  by 
Nathaniel  Lee;  (3)  Alexander  the 
Great  in  Little  (1837),  a  "  grand 
tragi-comic  operatic  burlesque  spec- 
tacle," by  T.  Dibdin. 

Alfarata,  an  Indian  maiden,  hero- 
ine of  one  of  the  most  popular  songs 
ever  produced  in  America — The  Blue 
Juniata,  by  Mrs.  Marion  Dix  Sulli- 
van.   The  opening  stanza  runs  thus: 

Wild  roved  an  Indian  girl, 

Bright  Alfarata, 
Where  sweep  the  waters 

Of  the  blue  Juniata. 
Swift  as  an  antelope. 

Through  the  forest  going. 
Loose  were  her  jetty  locks 

In  waving  tresses  flowing. 

There  is  no  great  poetical  merit  in 
the  lines,  but  they  have  a  musical 
lilt  which  caught  the  public  fancy. 
Every  one  sang  them;  girls  and  mares 
and  boats  and  other  things  feminine 
were  called  Alfarata,  and  the  name 
still  survives  in  such  corruptions  as 
Alfareta,  Alfaretta  and  Alfretta.  The 
Juniata  (or  Choniata)  River,  which 
is  formed  by  the  union  of  three  smaller 
streams  that  rise  in  the  Allegheny 


AHce 


12 


Allworthy 


Mountains  and  unite  near  Hunting- 
don, Pennsylvania,  to  be  lost  in  the 
Susquehanna,  about  a  mile  from  Dun- 
cannon,  was  a  former  haunt  of  the  Iro- 
quois Indians,  who  gave  it  its  name. 

Alice,  heroine  of  Bulwer  Lytton's 
novel,  Ernest  Maltravers  (1837)  and 
its  sequel  Alice,  or  the  Mysteries 
(i 838) .  She  is  the  daughter  of  Darvil, 
a  burglar;  is  educated  by  Maltravers, 
becomes  his  mistress,  and  bears  him 
a  daughter,  who  dies.  They  are 
separated  for  twenty  years.  Alice 
marries  a  banker  named  Templeton. 
The  latter  is  raised  to  the  peerage 
under  the  title  of  Vargrave.  See 
Maltravers,  Ernest. 

Alice,  the  girl  heroine  of  two  fairy 
tales  by  "Louis  Carroll"  (C.  L. 
Dodgson),  which  grew  out  of  stories 
the  author  had  told  to  his  little  friend 
Alice  Liddell,  daughter  of  Dean 
Liddell.  Alice's  Adventures  in  Won- 
derland (1865),  tells  of  how  she  wan- 
dered in  a  dream  through  a  strange 
coimtry.  Through  the  Looking  Glass 
and  what  Alice  saw  there  (1871)  tells 
of  further  adventures  in  the  Topsy- 
turvey  land  of  which  gHmpses  are 
presented  in  the  ordinary  mirror. 

Alicia,  in  Nicholas  Rowe's  tragedy, 
Jane  Shore  (17 13),  the  discarded  mis- 
tress of  LfOrd  Hastings — "  a  laughing, 
toying,  whimpering  she  " — who  takes 
revenge  on  her  rival  Jane  Shore  by 
accusing  her  to  the  Duke  of  Gloster 
of  luring  Hastings  from  his  allegiance 
to  the  lord  protector.  When  her 
machinations  end  in  the  execution  of 
Hastings,  Alicia  goes  mad. 

The  king  of  Denmark  went  to  see  Mrs. 
Bellamy  play  "Alicia,"  and  fell  into  a  sound 
sleep.  The  angry  lady  had  to  say,  "O  thou 
false  lord  I"  and  she  drew  near  to  the  slum- 
bering monarch,  and  shouted  the  words  into 
the  royal  box.  The  king  started,  rubbed  his 
eyes,  and  remarked  that  he  would  not  have 
such  a  woman  for  his  wife,  though  she  had 
no  end  of  kingdoms  for  a  dowry. — Cornhill 
Magazine  (1863). 

Aliris,  in  Moore's  Lalla  Rookh,  the 
real  name  of  the  Sultan  of  Lower 
Bucharia,  who,  under  the  disguise  of 
the  poet  Feramors  (q.v.),  wooed  and 
won  Lalla  Rookh. 

Alison,  in  The  Miller's  Tale,  one  of 
Chaucer's   Canterbury  Tales  (1588), 


the  young  wife  of  John,  an  old  car- 
penter, wealthy,  miserly  and  easily 
duped.  She  is  pursued  by  Absalon, 
the  priggish  parish  clerk,  but  is  her- 
self in  love  with  her  lodger  Nicholas, 
who  joins  her  in  pla34ng  practical 
jokes  upon  her  husband. 

Allen,  Benjamin,  in  Dickens's 
Pickwick  Papers  (1836),  a  medical 
student  friend  and  room-mate  of  Bob 
Sawyer  (q.v.),  for  whom  he  destines 
his  sister  Arabella,  but  the  latter  ran 
away  and  married  Mr.  Winkle  with 
the  connivance  of  Pickwick  and  Sam 
Weller. 

Allen,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  in  Jane 
Austen's  Northauger  Abbey,  the 
friends  with  whom  Catherine  Mor- 
land  spends  a  season  at  Bath. 

Mrs.  Allen  Is  sublime  on  her  scale.  A 
novelist  who  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  could  do  Mrs.  Allen,  could  do  any- 
thing that  she  chose  to  do;  and  might  be 
trusted  never  to  attempt  anything  that  she 
could  not  achieve. — George  Saintsbury: 
The  English  Novel,  page  194. 

Allmers,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  the  chief 
characters  in  Henrik  Ibsen's  drama, 
Little  Eyolf  (1894).  He  is  engaged 
in  writing  a  book  on  Human  Respon- 
sibility, while^  at  his  very  hand  his 
crippled  son  is  perishing  of  neglect. 
He  suddenly  awakes  to  this,  and 
simultaneously  to  the  fact  that  his 
wife's  jealousy  has  shifted  from  the 
book  to  the  child.  Her  passion  is  so 
strong  that  it  is  evil.  She  cares  noth- 
ing for  the  calm,  deep  tenderness  of 
her  husband.  She  will  share  him 
with  nobody. 

Allworthy,  Squire,  in  Henry  Field- 
ing's novel,  Tom  Jones,  a  man  of 
scrupulous  rectitude,  great  benevo- 
lence, philanthropy  and  public  spirit, 
who  shrank  from  any  reward  of 
money  or  fame.  The  character  is 
drawn  from  Ralph  Allen,  the  friend 
alike  of  Fielding  and  of  Pope. 

Let  humble  Allen  with  an  awkward  shame 
Do  good  by  stealth  and  blush  to  find  it  fame. 
Popb:  Epilogue  to  the  Satires, 
Dialogue  1, 136. 

Allen,  however,  was  not  so  humble 
as  not  to  object  to  the  epithet  ''  low- 
bom  "   which   Pope   had   originally 


Allworthy 


13 


Almanzor 


tised,  but  which  to  please  his  friend 
he  withdrew  in  the  next  edition  in 
favor  of  *'  humble." 

Allworthy,  Mistress  Bridget,  in 
Fielding's  novel,  The  History  of  Tom 
Jones,  A  Foundling  (1750).  the  spin- 
ster sister  of  Squire  Allworthy;  even- 
tually discovered  to  be  the  mother  of 
Tom  Jones.  In  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury the  term  Mrs.  or  Mistress  was 
applied  to  all  ladies  of  mature  years, 
whether  married  or  single.  Fielding 
concedes  that  Bridget  was  not  remark- 
able for  physical  beauty.  He  con- 
tinues: 

"I  would  attempt  to  draw  her  picture, 
but  that  is  done  already  by  a  more  able 
master,  Mr.  Hogarth  himself,  to  whom  she 
sat  many  years  ago  and  hath  been  lately 
exhibited  by  that  gentleman  in  his  print  of 
A  Winter's  Morning,  of  which  she  was  no 
improper  emblem,  and  may  be  seen  walking 
rfor  walk  she  does  in  the  print)  to  Covent 
Garden  Church,  with  a  starved  footboy 
behind,  carrying  her  prayer  book. — Tom 
Jones,  Bk.  i.  Chap.  ad. 

It  has  been  wondered  why  Fielding  should 
have  chosen  to  leave  the  stain  of  illegiti- 
macy on  the  birth  of  his  hero  .  .  .  but 
had  Miss  Bridget  been  privately  married 
there  could  have  been  no  adequate  motive 
assigned  for  keeping  the  birth  of  the  child 
a  secret  from  a  man  so  reasonable  and  com- 
passionate as  Allworthy. — EncydoPcedia  Bri- 
tannica,  article  Fielding. 

Alma  (Latin,  the  soul),  in  Spenser's 
Faerie  Qtieene,  an  allegorical  charac- 
ter typifying  the  mind  of  man.  She 
inhabits  a  castle  emblematic  of  the 
human  body. 

But  thousand  enemies  about  us  rave, 
And  with  long  siege  us  in  this  Castle  hould: 
Seven  yeares  this  wize  they  us  besieged  have. 
And  many  good  Knights  slaine'  that  have 
us  sought  to  save. 

Spenser. 

The  House  of  Temperaunce,  In  which 

Doth  sober  Alma  dwell. 
Besieged  of  many  foes,  whom  straunger 

Knights  to  flight  compell. 

Spenser. 

Alma  is  also  the  subject  of  a  poem 
of  the  same  name  by  Matthew  Prior. 

iUmachide,  the  name  under  which 
Helorachis  is  Italianized  in  Aliieri's 
tragedy  Rosmunda,  the  paramour  of 
the  titular  heroine.    See  Rosmunda. 

Almahide,  hero  of  Madeleine  de 
Scudery's  historical  romance  (1660- 
1663),  Almahide  or  the  Captive  Queen, 


which  she  derived  from  Perez  de 
Hita's  romance,  Historia  de  los  Van- 
dos,  dealing  with  the  feuds  of  the 
Zegris  and  the  Abencerrages  in 
Granada.  From  Mdlle.  de  Scudery, 
Dryden  drew  the  material  for  his 
tragedy.  The  Conquest  of  Granada. 

Almahide,  Queen  of  Granada  and 
heroine  of  Dryden's  drama,  Almanzor 
and  Almahide,  or  the  Conquest  of 
Granada  (1672).  During  the  hfe- 
time  of  her  husband  BoabdeUn,  King 
of  Granada,  she  resists  the  bold 
wooing  of  Almanzor,  but  becomes  his 
consort  after  Boabdelin's  death.  She 
presents  a  picture  of  real  female 
dignity  against  which  the  passion  of 
love  contends  in  vain. 

Almanzor  (Arabic,  "  The  Invinci- 
ble "),  a  title  assumed  by  several 
Mussulman  princes,  notably  by  the 
second  caHph  of  the  Abbaside  dynasty, 
Abou  Giafar  Abdallah,  and  by  Mo- 
hammed, the  great  captain  of  the 
Moors  in  Spain. 

The  latter,  under  his  assumed 
name,  is  the  hero  of  Dryden's  drama 
Almanzor  and  Almahide,  or  the  Con* 
quest  of  Granada  (1670).  He  is  repre- 
sented as  a  prodigious  warrior,  an 
irrepressible  lover,  a  bombastic  self- 
appraiser.  He  persists  in  wooing 
Almahide,  Queen  of  Granada,  al- 
though she  is  the  consort  of  Boabde- 
lin.  On  the  death  of  the  king  there 
is  no  longer  any  obstacle  to  the  tmion 
of  the  titular  characters.  Dryden 
confesses  of  Almanzor  that  he  de- 
rived "  the  first  image  from  the 
Achilles  of  Homer;  the  next  from 
Tasso's  Rinaldo  (who  was  a  copy  of 
the  former),  and  the  third  from  the 
Artaban  of  M.  Calpranede,  who 
had  imitated  both."  Dryden  com- 
placently adds;  "  He  is  on  a  grand 
scale,  not  like  the  heroes  of  French 
romance."  There  is  in  fact  much 
extravagance  in  the  conception  and 
much  bombast  in  particular  passages, 
but  the  impetus  which  enables  the 
author  to  sustain  the  character 
through  ten  acts  is  remarkable.  He 
was  a  favorite  butt  for  caricature  and 
is  the  undoubted  original  of  Draw- 
cansir  in  Buckingham's  burlesque. 
The  Rehearsal  (1672). 


Almeria 


14 


Alroy 


It  is  not  only  the  actual  effects  of  Alman- 
zor's  valor  which  appear  to  us  unnatural, 
but  also  the  extraordinary  principles  and 
moi-ives  by  which  those  exertions  are 
guided.  .  .  .  The  extravagance  of  sen- 
timent is  no  less  necessary  than  the  extrava- 
gance of  achievement  to  constitute  a  true 
knight  errant;  and  such  is  Almanzor. — SiR 
Walter  Scott. 

Blank  verse  is  now,  with  one  consent,  allied 
To  Tragedy,  and  rarely  quits  her  side. 
Though  mad  Almanzor  rhymed  in  Dryden's 

days,  . 

No  sing-song  Hero  rants  in  modern  plays. 
Byron:    Hints  from  Horace,  1.  120. 

Almeria,  in  William  Congreve's 
drama,  The  Mourning  Bride  (1697), 
daughter  of  Manuel,  King  of  Granada. 
Against  her  father's  wishes  she  mar- 
ried Prince  Alphonso,  but  the  ship 
that  was  bearing  her  to  her  new  home 
foundered  at  sea,  and  bride  and  groom 
were  separated,  only  to  meet  again 
on  the  coast  of  Granada,  whither 
Alphonso  was  brought  as  a  captive. 
Under  the  assiimed  name  of  Osmyn  he 
was  cast  into  jail;  escaped  to  head  a 
successful  invasion  of  Granada.  He 
found  Ejng  Manuel  dead,  assiuned 
the  crown  and  turned  the  "  mourning 
bride  "  into  a  happy  wife. 

Almeyda,  in  Camoens'  epic.  The 
Lusiad,  Canto  x  (1569),  the  Portu- 
guese governor  of  India,  who,  fight- 
ing against  the  allied  fleets  of  Cam- 
baya  and  Egypt,  had  both  legs  shat- 
tered by  chain  shot.  Refusing  to  let 
himself  be  carried  to  the  rear,  he 
insisted  on  being  lashed  to  the  mast, 
and  in  this  condition  waved  his  sword 
to  cheer  on  the  combatants  until  he 
expired  from  loss  of  blood. 

Whirled  by  the  cannons'  rage,  in  shivers 

torn, 
His  thighs  far  scattered  o'er  the  waves  are 

borne; 
Bound  to  the  mast  the  God-like  hero  stands 
Waves  his  proud  sword  and  cheers  his  woful 

bands; 
Though  winds  and  seas  their  wonted  aid 

deny 
To  yield  he  knows  not,  but  he  knows  to  die. 

There  was  a  story  that,  at  the 
battle  of  New  Orleans  during  the 
American  Civil  War,  Admiral  Farra- 
gut  had  himself  lashed  to  the  mast, 
but  he  always  denied  it. 

Aloadin,  in  Southey's  epic,  Thalaba 
(Bk.  vii),  the  possessor  of  an  en- 


chanted garden  of  impure  delights  to 
which  he  admitted  ordy  fools  and  his 
own  enemies.  Few  who  experienced 
its  delights  wished  to  return.  Easily 
they  yielded  to  the  magician's  de- 
mands that  they  should  sign  away 
their  inheritances  to  him;  whereupon 
Aloadin  cut  them  off  in  the  midst  of 
their  fancied  bliss.  The  original 
forms  Tale  xxiv  Of  the  Suggestions  of 
the  Devil  in  the  Gesta  Romanorum. 

Alonzo  the  Brave,  in  M.  G.  Lewis's 
once  famous  ballad,  Alonzo  the  Brave 
and  the  Fair  Imogene  (1795).  A  good 
knight  and  true  who  left  his  lady- 
love behind  him  when  he  went  to  the 
wars  with  a  solemn  pledge  on  both 
sides  that  each  would  be  faithful 
until  death.  But  Imogene  became 
the  bride  of  another  and  Alonzo's 
ghost,  clad  in  complete  steel,  came 
and  sat  beside  her  during  the  wedding 
feast  and  she  knew  him  not  until  he 
lifted  up  his  vizor  and  showed  a 
worm-infested  skull.  Then  whisking 
her  on  his  steed  he  carried  her  off  to 
the  grave.  Many  pantomimes,  bur- 
lesques, and  dramas  have  been 
founded  on  this  theme,  from  Alonzo 
and  Imogene  or  the  Bridal  Spectre 
(1801),  a  pantomimic  romance  by 
T.  Dibdin,  down  to  Alonzo  the  Brave, 
a  burlesque  by  H.  T.  Craven. 

Alph,  an  imaginary  river  which 
Coleridge,  in  his  poem  Kubla  Khan, 
places  in  "  Xanadu."  The  name  was 
of  his  own  invention,  but  was  prob- 
ably suggested  by  the  Alpheus  of 
classic  myth. 

In  Xanadu  did  Kubla  Khan 

A  stately  pleasure-dome  decree, 
Where  Alph,  the  sacred  river,  ran 
Through  caverns  measureless  to  man, 
Down  to  a  sunless  sea. 

Alroy,  David,  a  semi-legendary 
Jewish  prince  of  the  twelfth  century 
whom  Disraeli  has  made  the  hero  of 
a  historical  romance  in  poetical  prose, 
The  Wondrous  Tale  of  Alroy.  After 
the  Moslem  conquest,  Jerusalem  had 
acknowledged  the  supremacy  of  the 
Caliphate,  but  the  Jews  of  the  east 
still  retained  a  limited  self-govern- 
ment under  a  governor  of  their  own 
race  who  bore  the  title  "  Prince  of 
the  Captivity."    The  power  of  this 


Alsatia 


15 


Althea 


prince  always  rose  and  fell  in  inverse 
proportion  to  that  of  the  Caliphate, 
and  the  annals  of  the  people  tell  of 
periods  when  the  Prince  of  the  Cap- 
tivity enjoyed  power  and  dignity 
scarcely  less  than  those  of  the  ancient 
kings  of  Judah.  David  Alroy  was  one 
of  these  princes  at  a  time  when  the 
Caliphate  was  weakened.  Four  Sel- 
juk  sultans  had  divided  the  inheri- 
tance of  the  Prophet  between  them; 
but  they,  in  their  turn,  had  begim  to 
languish  from  luxurious  living,  and 
therefore  saw  with  concern  the 
increasing  power'  of  the  kings  of 
Karasme. 

On  a  slender  basis  of  historical  fact, 
Disraeli  makes  Alroy  the  temporary 
liberator  of  his  people. 

The  psychological  interest  of  the  romance 
consists  almost  exclusively  in  the  develop- 
ment of  Alroy's  character.  He  has  scarcely 
come  off  victorious,  and  achieved  his  first 
task  of  liberating  Israel,  than  the  task  itself 
seems  insignificant  to  him,  and  he  seeks  for 
some  greater  object,  for  no  one  has  been 
able  to  withstand  him,  and  Western  Asia 
lies  at  his  feet.  He  will  not  be  content  with 
rebuilding  Solomon's  Temple;  his  ambition 
is  not  to  be  so  easily  satisfied;  he  wants  to 
found  a  great  Asiatic  empire.     .     .     . 

This  ambition  occasions  Alroy's  fall. 
The  Israelitish  religious  fanaticism,  which 
raised  him  to  victory,  now  turns  against 
him  with  embitterment  at  the  time  when  he 
is  himself  forgetting  the  projects  and  resolves 
of  his  youth  by  the  side  of  a  Mohammedan 
sultana  in  luxurious  Bagdad.  The  King  of 
Karasme  assassinates  him,  and  succeeds  to 
his  empire  and  his  bride. — George  Brandes, 
Lord  Beaconsfield. 

Alsatia,  the  name  given  in  the  six- 
teenth century  to  Whitefriars,  a 
London  precinct  formerly  just  out- 
side of  the  city  walls,  where  outlaws 
found  immunity  from  arrest.  It  is 
famous  in  dramatic  literature  through 
Shadwell's  comedy,  The  Squire  of 
Alsatia  (see  Belford),  and  in  fiction 
through  Scott's  description  in  The 
Fortunes  of  Nigel.  Originally  it  had 
been  the  riverside  monastery  and 
gardens  of  a  community  of  Carmelites 
(or  White  Friars),  founded  in  the 
reign  of  Edward  I  and  confiscated  by 
Henry  VIII.  In  the  reign  of  Edward 
VI  houses  for  persons  of  rank  and 
wealth  were  erected  here.  The  old 
monastery  had  possessed  the  right  of 
sanctuary  and  this  privilege  of  exemp- 


tion affording  immunity  from  arrest 
so  far  as  debtors  were  concerned  was 
continued  to  the  district  by  James  I 
in  royal  charter. 

The  result  might  have  been  fore- 
seen. The  prospect  of  immunity  from 
arrest  attracted  so  many  bad  char- 
acters that  persons  of  respectability 
were  driven  out  and  their  houses 
became  the  tenement  of  outlaws  of 
both  sexes. 

In  1695  the  nuisance  of  Alsatia  had 
become  so  great  that  the  Templars 
bricked  up  their  eastern  gateway. 
The  Alsatians  collected,  killed  one  of 
the  workmen,  pulled  down  the  wall, 
and  when  the  sheriff  of  the  city 
arrived  they  carried  ofiE  his  gold  chain, 
which  soon  went  to  the  melting 
pot. 

Two  years  later  a  Captain  Wynter 
was  brought  to  the  gallows  for  leading 
this  riot.  An  act  of  Parliament  finally 
suppressed  the  privileges  of  sanctuary 
in  Whitefriars  and  similar  spots  in 
London.  Warning  was  given  that 
after  a  certain  date  the  military  would 
hunt  out  all  the  old  rookeries  of  the 
precinct.  There  was  a  hasty  flight 
of  all  the  "  copper  captains "  to 
France,  Ireland  and  elsewhere.  Since 
then  practically  all  Alsatia  has  been 
rebuilt. 

Altamont,  Colonel  Jack,  sometimes 
known  under  other  aliases — Johnny 
Armstrong  or  J.  Amory— in  Thack- 
eray's novel  Pendennis,  the  first 
husband  of  Lady  Clavering  and  father 
of  Blanche  Amory.  Convicted  of 
forgery  and  sentenced  to  transporta- 
tion, he  had  escaped  from  the  convict 
colony  and  reappeared  in  London, 
where  his  wife,  trusting  to  a  report  of 
his  death,  had  married  Sir  Francis 
Clavering.  For  a  time  he  subsists 
partly  on  dishonest  winnings  at  the 
gaming  table  and  partly  by  black- 
mailing the  Claverings.  Fmally  he 
is  unmasked  and  forced  to  fly  from 
England,  but  not  without  first  reveal- 
ing that  his  marriage  to  Lady  Claver- 
ing was  null  and  void  through  re- 
peated bigamy  before  he  had  met  her. 

Althea,  heroine  of  Richard  Love- 
lace's poem.  To  Althea  in  Prison.   See 

LUCASTA. 


Altisidora 


16 


Amarinth 


Altisidora,  in  Cervantes*  Don 
Quixote,  II,  iii,  9,  a  maidservant  of 
the  duchess  who  in  a  spirit  of  mischief 
pretends  to  be  in  love  with  him  and 
serenades  him.  He  sings  in  response 
that  he  has  no  love  for  any  one  but 
Dulcinea,  and  while  he  is  singing  a 
string  of  cats  are  let  into  the  room  by 
a  rope. 

Alvan,  Dr.,  hero  of  George  Mere- 
dith's novel,  The  Tragic  Comedians, 
which  is  founded  on  the  love  story  of 
Frederick  Lascelle. 

Alving,  Mrs.,  in  Henrik  Ibsen's 
domestic  drama  Ghosts  (1881),  a 
widow,  mother  of  Oswald,  the  type 
of  the  new  woman  in  revolt  against 
the  conventional  lies  of  society  as  a 
result  of  her  own  bitter  experience. 

Mrs.  Alving  Is  not  anybody  In  particular: 
she  is  a  typical  figure  of  the  experienced, 
intelligent  woman  who,  in  passing  from  the 
first  to  the  last  quarter  of  the  hour  of  history 
called  the  nineteenth  century,  has  discov- 
ered how  appallingly  opportunities  were 
wasted,  morals  perverted,  and  instincts  cor- 
rupted, not  only — sometimes  not  at  all — 
by  the  vices  she  was  taught  to  abhor  in  her 
youth,  but  by  the  virtues  it  was  her  pride 
and  uprightness  to  maintain. — George 
Bernard  Sbaw,  Dramatic  Opinions, 

Alving,  Oswald,  in  the  same  play, 
a  victim  of  hereditary  disease  trans- 
mitted through  his  worthless  and 
dissipated  father.  He  has  gone  out 
into  the  world  to  make  a  name  for 
himself  but  he,  too,  falls  into  evil 
courses  and  returns  home  to  his 
mother  to  die  of  his  own  and  his 
father's  vices. 

Alzire,  heroine  and  title  of  a 
tragedy  b)r  Voltaire  (1736).  The 
scene  is  laid  in  Peru.  Alzire  is  a 
captive  who  accepts  the  hand  of 
Guzman,  governor  of  Peru  and  con- 
queror of  her  country,  under  the 
impression  that  her  betrothed  lover 
Zamore  has  been  slain.    See  Zamore. 

Amanda.  Under  this  name  James 
Thomson,  in  a  number  of  amatory 
verses,  celebrated  his  passion,  real  or 
feigned,  for  a  Miss  Young,  who  even- 
tually married  Admiral  Campbell. 
One  little  song  won  special  popularity. 

Unless  with  my  Amanda  blest. 

In  vain  I  twine  the  woodbine  bower: 

Unless  I  deck  her  sweeter  breast. 
In  vain  I  rear  the  breathing  flower: 


Awakened  by  the  genial  year. 

In  vain  the  birds  around  me  sing. 

In  vain  the  freshening  fields  appear, 
Without  my  love  there  is  no  Spring. 

Amanda,  a  character  in  Gibber's 
Love's  Last  Shift  (1696),  who  reap- 
pears in  its  sequel  Vanbrugh's 
Relapse  (1697)  and  its  rehabihtation 
by  Sheridan,  A  Trip  to  Scarborough 
(1777).    See  Loveless. 

The  character  of  Amanda  Is  Interesting, 
especially  in  the  momentary  wavering  and 
quick  recovery  of  her  virtue.  This  is  the 
first  homage  that  the  theatre  had  paid,  since 
the  Restoration,  to  female  chastity;  and 
notwithstanding  the  vicious  tone  of  the 
other  characters  in  which  Vanbrugh  has 
gone  as  great  lengths  as  any  of  his  contem- 
poraries, we  perceive  the  beginning  of  a 
reaction  in  public  spirit,  which  gradually 
reformed  and  elevated  the  moral  standard 
of  the  stage. — Hallam,  Literature  of  Europe, 

Amanda,  heroine  of  Regina  Maria 
Roche's  romance.  The  Children  of  the 
Abbey,  is  the  motherless  daughter  of 
the  Earl  of  Dimreath.  His  second 
marriage  results  in  her  being  cast 
aside  by  her  father;  she  assumes  a 
false  name,  becomes  the  innocent 
victim  of  slander,  loses  a  will,  refuses 
the  hands  of  dukes  and  earls  and 
finally  with  her  brother's  assistance 
overcomes  her  enemies  and  lives 
happily  in  the  best  society  forever 
after. 

Amarilli,  heroine  of  //  Pastor  Fido 
{The  Faithful  Shepherd),  a  pastoral 
drama  (1585)  by  Giovanni  Battista 
Guarini.  She  is  a  maiden  in  Arcadia, 
descended  from  Pan  and  betrothed  to 
Silvio,  who  is  reputed  to  be  descended 
from  Herctdes.  ^  Because  the  union 
of  these  two  semi-divine  beings  would 
avert  a  terrible  calamity  from  her 
native  province  she  remains  faithful 
to  Silvio  though  he  cares  nothing  for 
her,  and  she  herself  is  in  love  with 
Mirtillo,  who  through  all  tribulations 
remains  faithful  to  her.  It  is  finally 
revealed  that  Mirtillo  is  the  re^ 
Silvio  and  the  scion  of  Hercules. 

Amarinth,  Esme,  in  Robert  S. 
Hichens'  novel,  The  Green  Carnation 
(1874),  satirizing  the  aesthetic  craze 
in  England,  is  an  evident  portrait  of 
Oscar  Wilde,  as  Esme's  disciple  and 
admirer.  Lord  Reginald  Hastings,  is 
Wilde's  friend.  Lord  Sholto  Douglas, 


Amasis 


17 


Ambrosio 


son  of  the  Marquis  of  Queensbury. 

Amasis,  in  The  Ring  of  Amasis,  a 
romance  by  E.  R.  Bulwer-Lytton 
("  Owen  Meredith "),  is  a  former 
prince  of  Egypt  whose  mummy  is 
unearthed  by  Count  Edmond  R — , 
together  with  a  brilliant  amethyst 
ring  and  Amasis's  story  written  on  a 
parchment  scroll.  From  the  latter 
it  appears  that  he  was  the  younger 
brother  of  Sethos,  both  sons  of 
Rameses  IX.  Sethos,  being  jealous, 
allowed  him  to  drown  one  day  while 
they  were  rowing  together.  Even- 
tually Sethos  lost  his  kingdom  and 
perished  miserably.  Edmond  pos- 
sesses himself  of  the  fatal  ring,  and 
the  tragedy  of  the  past  is  repeated  in 
his  own  life.  He  gives  it  to  Juliet, 
whom  he  loves,  but  who  loves  his 
younger  brother  Felix.  She  loses  the 
ring;  it  is  foimd  by  Felix,  and  he  has 
it  upon  his  hand  as  he  drowns  before 
his  brother's  eyes.  Some  time  after 
the  catastrophe,  Juliet,  ignorant  of 
the  truth,  marries  Edmond,  who 
becomes  insane  and  dies. 

Amaiirot  (Gr.  a/iavaos, "  shadowy"), 
in  Sir  Thomas  More's  Utopia,  the 
chief  city  in  his  fanciful  Utopia. 

Amber  Witch.  See  Schweidler, 
Mary. 

Amboyne,  Dr.,  in  Charles  Reade's 
novel,  P«/  Yourself  in  his  Place  (1870), 
a  physician,  philosopher,  and  peace- 
maker whose  pet  phrase  forms  the 
title  of  the  book.  He  stoutly  main- 
tains that  to  get  on  with  anybody  you 
must  understand  him  and  when  you 
understand  him  you  will  get  on  with 
him.  Probably  the  germ  of  this  idea 
lies  in  the  French  proverb.  Tout 
comprendre  est  tout  pardonner,  which 
Reade  may  have  found  quoted  in 
Hazlitt's  essays. 

Put  yourself  in  his  or  her  or  their  place 
is  Dr.  Amboyne's  constant  cry,  and  we  need 
hardly  add  that  in  his  hands  it  leads  to  the 
most  satisfactory  results.  Guided  by  this 
principle,  he  is  always  guessing  at  the 
secrets  of  other  people's  behaviour;  and. 
as  Mr.  Reade  arranges  the  conditions  of  the 
problem  of  which  Dr.  Amboyne  has  to  guess 
the  solution,  we  need  hardly  add  that  the 
doctor's  divinations  come  out  with  surpris- 
ing correctness.  We  admit  fully  the  wisdom 
of  the  principle,  and  will  only  venture  to 
remark  that  the  difficulty  lies  in  its  appli- 
cation.— Saturday  Review. 


Ambrose,  in  the  Nodes  Ambrosi- 
ancB,  keeper  of  the  (real)  Edinburgh 
tavern  which  was  the  scene  of  these 
imaginary  conversations.  Seventy- 
one  in  number,  they  appeared  in 
Blackwood's  Magazine  between  the 
years  1822  and  1835.  Thirty-nine 
were  from  the  pen  of  Professor  John 
Wilson  (i 785-1 854),  and  were  re- 
published, with  notes,  by  Professor 
Ferrier,  in  his  edition  of  Wilson's 
Works  ( 1 855-1 858).  The  conversa- 
tions were  supposed  to  take  place 
between  Christopher  North  (Wilson), 
Tickler  (Sym),  the  Ettrick  Shepherd 
(Hogg),  and  others,  in  the  "  blue 
parlour  "  of  a  tavern,  kept  by  one 
Ambrose,  and  situated  at  the  back 
of  Princes  Street,  close  to  the  Register 
Ofi&ce,  Edinburgh.  Hence  the  title. 
But,  as  Professor  Ferrier  says,  a  too 
literal  interpretation  is  not  to  be 
given  to  the  scene  of  these  festivities. 
"  Ambrose's  Hotel  was,  indeed,  *  a 
local  habitation  and  a  name,*  and 
many  were  the  meetings  which  Pro- 
fessor Wilson  and  his  friends  had 
within  its  walls.  But  the  true  Am- 
brose's must  be  looked  for  only  in  the 
realms  of  the  imagination.  The 
veritable  scene  of  the  Amhrosian 
Nights  existed  nowhere  but  in  their 
author's  brain."  The  following  is 
the  running  motto  in  the  Nodes: 

This  is  a  distich  by  wise  old  Phocylldes, 
An  ancient,  who  wrote  crabbed  Greek  in  no 

silly  days: 
Meaning  '"Tis  right  for  good  wine-bibbing 

people, 
Not  to  let  the  jug  pace  round  the  board  like 

a  cripple. 
But   gaily   to  chat  while  disdlissing  their 

tipple." 
An  excellent  rule  of  the  hearty  old  cock  'tis — 
And  a  very  fit  motto  to  put  on  otir  Noctes. 

Ambrosio,  hero  of  a  romance  by 
Matthew  Gregory  Lewis,  published 
(1795)  under  the  title  Ambrosio,  or 
the  Monk;  now  known  more  briefly  as 
The  Monk.  The  extraordinary  popu- 
larity of  the  book  earned  for  its  author 
the  sobriquet  "  Monk  "  Lewis.  Am- 
brosio, sumamed  the  "  Man  of 
Holiness,"  is  abbot  of  the  Capuchins 
at  Madrid.  Self -righteousness,  in- 
creased by  his  repute  among  the 
people,  ptiffs  up  his  heart  with  the 


Amelia 


18 


pride  that  provokes  a  fall.  An  in- 
fernal spirit  assuming  female  form 
and  the  name  of  Matilda  tempts  him, 
he  succimibs,  and  one  sin  leads  to 
another  until  finally  he  is  exposed 
and  condemned  to  death  by  the 
Inquisition.  He  sells  his  soul  to 
Lucifer,  gains  his  release  from  prison, 
but  is  dashed  against  a  rock  and  dies. 
James  Boarden  renamed  the  charac- 
ters in  Aurelio  and  Miranda^  a  drama 
(1798)  with  a  happy  ending,  founded 
on  Lewis's  novel. 

Amelia,  the  first  names  of  two 
kindred  characters  drawn  by  Fielding 
and  Thackeray.  See  Booth,  Amelia, 
and  Sedley,  Amelia. 

Amlet,  Richard  (or  Dick)  in  The 
Confederacy  (1705),  by  Sir  John  Van- 
brugh,  a  professional  gambler,  son  of 
a  wealthy  but  vulgar  tradeswoman. 

"  A  notable  instance,"  says  Charles 
Lamb,  "  of  the  ^  disadvantages  to 
which  this  chimerical  notion  of  affin- 
ity constituting  a  claim  to  acquaint- 
ance may  subject  the  spirit  of  a 
gentleman." 

Amoret,  or  Amoretta,  in  Spenser's 
Faerie  Queene,  Book  iii,  the  type  of 
wifely  love  and  devotion.  She  was 
the  twin  sister  of  Belphcebe  and 
daughter  of  Chrysogone.  While 
mother  and  babes  were  deep  in 
sltunber  Diana  took  Belphcebe  to 
bring  up  and  Venus  took  Amoret. 
Venus  placed  the  child  in  charge  of 
Psyche  who  reared  her  as  tenderly  as 
her  own  daughter  Pleasure.  On 
reaching  maturity  Amoret  was  re- 
moved to  the  court  of  the  Faerie 
Queene  and  was  wooed  by  many 
knights  but  gave  her  heart  to  Sir 
Scudamore;  was  abducted  by  Busi- 
rane,  an  enchanter,  delivered  from 
his  toils  by  Britomart,  and  finally 
married  Sir  Scudamore. 

Amory,  Blanche  (christened  Betsy), 
in  Thackeray's  novel  Pendennis 
(1848- 1 849),  the  daughter  of  Lady 
Clavering  by  her  first  husband.  Colo- 
nel Altamont,  alias  J.  Amory.  Pretty, 
emotional,  affected,  untruthful,  this 
young  lady  **  had  a  sham  enthusiasm, 
a  sham  hatred,  a  sham  love,  a  sham 
taste,  a  sham  grief,  each  of  which 
flared  and  shone  very  vehemently  for 


an  instant  but  subsided  and  gave 
place  to  the  next  sham  emotion  " 
(Chapter  Ixxiii).  She  engages  her- 
self to  Pendennis,  but  to  his  great 
relief  dismisses  him  when  the  wealthy 
Harry  Foker  proposes  to  her.  Even- 
tually Foker  breaks  with  her  and  she 
declines  upon  a  French  nobleman  of 
xmcertain  standing. 

Jean  Carlyle  alludes  to  the  original  of 
Blanche  in  a  letter  dated  1851.    "Not,"  she 

says  "that  the  poor  little is  quite  such 

a  Uttle  devil  as  Thackeray,  who  has  detested 
her  from  a  child,  has  here  represented,  but 
the  looks,  the  manners,  the  wiles,  the  larmes, 
and  'all  that  sort  of  thing'  are  a  i>erfect 
likeness  .  .  .  She  was  the  only  legiti- 
mate child  of  a  beautiful,  yoixng,  improper 

female  who  was  for  a  number  of  years 's 

mistress — she  had  had  a  husband,  a  swindler. 
His  mother  took  the  freak  of  patronizing 
this  mistress  and  then  of  adopting  the  child 
and  died,  leaving  her  only  £250  a  year  to 
support  her  in  the  luxurious  habits  to  which 
she  had  been  accustomed." 

Ammideville,  Lord  Henry,  in  By- 
ron's Don  Juan,  Books  xiii  and  xiv, 
one  of  the  English  Privy  Council  who, 
with  his  wife.  Lady  AdeHne,  enter- 
tains Don  Juan,  Aurora  Raby  and 
others  at  his  country  seat.  The  lady 
is  thus  described  in  Canto  xiii: 

The  fair  most  fatal  Juan  ever  met.l 

Although  she  was  not  evil  nor  meant 
ill.     .     .     . 

Chaste  was  she,  to  detraction's  desperation. 
And  wedded  unto  one  she  had  loved  well — 

A  man  known  in  the  councils  of  the  nation. 
Cool,  and  quite  English,  imperturbable. 

The  description  of  the  husband 
applies  correctly  enough  to  William 
Lamb  (Lord  Melbourne),  and  that 
of  the  lady  may  be  the  poetical 
perjury  of  a  gentleman  towards 
Byron's  former  flame.  Lady  Caroline 
Lamb. 

Ana,  or  Vrilya,  in  Bulwer  L5rtton's 
novel.  The  Coming  Race  (1870),  are 
imaginary  beings  inhabiting  an  imag- 
inary subterranean  world.  They  have 
outstripped  man  by  many  years  in 
scientific  acquirements,  especially  in 
the  discovery  of  a  force,  vril,  whereof 
all  other  forces  are  merely  modifica- 
tions. The  discoverer  of  this  Utopia 
is  an  American  who  tries  to  convert 
his  hosts  to  the  principles  of  democ- 
racy as  he  understands  the  word,  but 
is  told  that  they  know  all  about 


Anacharsis 


19 


Andrea  del  Sarto 


democracy  and  have  labelled  it  in 
their  language  Koombosh,  or  govern- 
ment of  the  ignorant. 

Anacharsis  the  Younger,  hero  of 
an  archasological  romance  by  the 
Abb6  Barthelemy,  Voyage  du  Jeune 
Anacharsis  (1779).  A  namesake  and 
descendant  of  the  Thracian  King  who 
was  the  friend  and  counselor  of  Solon 
(circa  600  B.C.),  this  Anacharsis 
settles  in  Athens  during  the  reign  of 
Alexander  the  Great,  makes  the 
acquaintance  of  Plato,  Demosthenes, 
Xenophon,  and  other  famous  citizens 
of  that  period,  and  becomes  an  earnest 
studentof  all  contemporary  literature, 
history,  and  art,  and  an  intelli- 
gent critic  and  commentator  on  the 
same. 

Anacreon  Moore,  a  sobriquet  be- 
stowed by  Lord  Byron  upon  Thomas 
Moore; 

In  that  heathenish  heaven, 
Described    by    Mahomet    and    Anacreon 
Moore. 

The  allusion  is  to  the  fact  that 
Moore  had  translated  Anacreon  and 
had  imitated  him  in  original  poems. 

Anastasius,  hero  of  an  oriental 
romance  of  that  title  (18 19),  by 
Thomas  Hope,  purporting  to  be  "  the 
Memoirs  of  a  Greek,  written  at  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century."  To 
escape  the  consequences  of  his  own 
profligacy  and  villainy  Anastasius 
runs  away  from  Chios,  his  birth- 
place, takes  ship  on  a  Venetian  vessel 
which  is  captured  by  the  Turks,  re- 
sorts to  all  sorts  of  shifts  such_  as 
jugglery,  peddling,  and  medical 
quackery  to  earn  his  living  in  Con- 
stantinople; turns  Mussulman  and 
visits  Egypt,  Ara!)ia,  Sicily  and  Italy, 
and  finally  dies  young,  a  worn-out 
adventurer. 

Ancient  Mariner,  the  otherwise 
unnamed  hero  of  a  poem,  The  Rhyme 
of  the  Ancient  Mariner  (1798),  by 
Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge.  An  old, 
gray-bearded  man,  with  a  glittering 
eye,  he  stops  a  wedding  guest  on  his 
way  to  the  ceremony,  first  by  a  physi- 
cal grasp,  then,  when  that  proves 
ineffectual,  by  a  purely  spiritual 
power.     He   pours   out   his   story. 


Wantonly,  in  Arctic  seas,  he  had  shot 
an  albatross,  a  bird  of  good  omen  to 
sailors,  and  one,  moreover,  that  loved 
him  (1.  404),  and  the  whole  universe 
had  seemed  to  shudder  at  the  crime. 
The  sun  darkened,  the  wind  was 
stilled;  the  ship  lay  **  idle  as  a  painted 
ship  upon  a  painted  ocean."  Horrors 
accumulate;  his  comrades  sicken  and 
die ;  their  places  are  taken  by  spectres. 
When  finally  the  mariner  is  set  free 
he  is  doomed  to  tell  his  story  wher- 
ever he  lands  to  the  first  comer. 
Many  sources  for  the  poem  have  been 
suggested:  a  passage  in  Shelvocke's 
Voyages  which  led  Wordsworth  to 
suggest  the  shooting  of  the  albatross; 
the  narrative  of  The  Strange  and  Dan- 
gerous Voyage  of  Captain  Thomas 
Jones;  a  friend's  dream  of  a  skeleton 
ship  with  figures  in  it.  But  these  are 
all  inadequate  to  account  for  or  to 
explain  a  unique  work  of  original 
genius. 

The  Ancient  Mariner  is  perhaps  the  most 
wonderful  of  all  poems.  In  reading  it  we 
seem  rapt  into  that  paradise  revealed  by 
Swedenborg,  where  music  and  colour  and 

Eerfume  were  one,  where  you  could  see  the 
ues  and  hear  the  harmonies  of  heaven.  For 
absolute  melody  and  splendour  it  were 
hardly  rash  to  call  it  the  first  poem  in  the 
language.  An  exquisite  instinct  married  to 
a  subtle  science  of  verse  has  made  it  the 
supreme  model  of  music  in  our  language. — 
Swinburne. 

Andrea  del  Sarto  (or  The  Tailor's 
Andrew),  nickname  of  a  famous 
painter  of  the  Florentine  school 
( 1 487-1 531)  who  was  the  son  of  a 
tailor.  He  was  also  called  the  Fault- 
less Painter  from  his  mastery  of  tech- 
nique. His  love  for  his  wife,  Lucrezia 
del  Fede,  a  wanton  and  a  vixen,  is 
one  of  the  tragedies  in  the  history  of 
art.  She  was  very  beautiful ;  he  used 
her  as  his  model  for  the  Madonna, 
and  even  in  painting  other  women 
he  made  them  resemble  Lucrezia 
in  type.  Robert  Browning's  poem, 
Andrea  del  Sarto,  in  Men  and  Women 
(1855),  was  suggested  by  the  painter's 
portrait  of  himself  and  his  wife  in  the 
Pitti  Palace  at  Florence. 

"Faultless  but  soulless"  Is  the  verdict  of 
art  critics  on  Andrea's  works.  Why  is 
this?  Mr.  Browning's  poem  tells  us  m  no 
hesitating  phrase  that  the  secret  lay  in  the 


Andrews 


20 


Angelica 


fact  that  Andrea  was  an  immoral  man,  an 
infatuated  man,  passionately  demanding 
love  from  a  woman  who  had  neither  heart 
nor  intellect,  a  wife  for  whom  he  sacrificed 
his  soul  and  the  highest  interests  of  his  life. — 
Edward  Berdoe,  The  Browning  Cyclopedia, 
p.  i6. 

Andrews,  Joseph,  hero  of  Henry- 
Fielding's  novel,  The  Adventures  of 
Joseph  Andrews  and  his  friend  Abra- 
ham Adams  (1742).  It  was  begun 
simply  as  a  burlesque  upon  Richard- 
son's Pamela  but  the  author  grew 
serious  before  the  close  and  presented 
an  accurate  picture  of  contemporary 
life  and  manners.  It  starts,  however, 
with  the  true-born  Briton's  postulate 
that  what  is  virtue  in  a  woman  is 
nonsense  in  a  man.  Joseph  Andrews 
is  the  brother  of  Pamela  and,  like 
her,  out  at  service.  He  obtains  a 
position  in  the  family  of  Lady  Booby, 
a  close  relation  of  the  mysteriously 
initiated  Mr.  B.  of  Richardson's 
novel.  His  adventures  with  Lady 
Booby  closely  resemble  those  of 
Pamela  with  Mr.  B.  (as  likewise  they 
resemble  those  of  Joseph's  biblical 
namesake  and  Mrs.  Potiphar),  but 
virtue  triumphs,  he  retains  his  purity 
and  remains  true  to  Fanny,  the 
honest,  humble  girl  whom  he  loves 
and  eventually  marries.  It  turns 
out  that  she  is  the  daughter  of  the 
family  who  had  adopted  him,  while 
he  himself  is  of  more  exalted  rank 
and  station. 

Andrews,  Pamela,  in  Richardson's 
novel,  Pamela,  or  Virtue  Rewarded 
(1741),  a  farmer's  daughter,  pure, 
refined,  lovely  and  amiable.  At  the 
age  of  eighteen  she  becomes  waiting- 
maid  and  half  companion  to  a  dow- 
ager lady  of  great  fortune  in  Bedford- 
shire. The  son  of  the  family  (men- 
tioned only  as  Mr.  B.  in  the  letters 
that  tell  the  story)  conceives  an 
ignoble  passion  for  her;  but  does  little 
towards  achieving  his  design  until 
the  mother's  death.  Even  then  he  is 
withheld  by  a  grave  doubt  whether 
Pamela's  social  rank  is  such  as  would 
make  her  eligible  as  his  mistress. 
This  scruple  overcome,  he  lays  siege 
as  one  accustomed  to  conquest.  Sur- 
prised at  being  rebuffed,  he  tries  the 
effect  of  bribes — a  handsome  allow- 


ance for  herself  and  all  sorts  of  good 
things  for  her  parents — and  then 
proceeds  to  the  bolder  alternative  of 
abduction.  Finding  at  last  that  he 
cannot  seduce  her,  he  marries  her 
and  reforms. 

Andrews,  Shamela,  the  name  under 
which  the  heroine  of  Richardson's 
Pamela  was  ridiculed  in  a  burlesque. 
Apology  for  the  Life  of  Mrs.  Shamela 
A  ndrews.  In  which  the  many  notorious 
Falsehoods  and  Misrepresentations  of 
a  Book  called  Pamela  are  exposed  and 
refuted  and  all  the  matchless  Arts  of 
that  young  Politician  set  in  a  just  and 
true  light  (1741).  This  pamphlet 
purported  to  be  from  the  pen  of  "  Mr. 
Conny  Keyber,"  a  thin  disguise  for 
CoUey  Gibber,  but  Richardson  im- 
puted it  to  Henry  Fielding,  whose 
avowed  burlesque,  Joseph  Andrews, 
came  out  a  year  later,  and  Austin 
Dobson  {Samuel  Richardson,  pp. 
43~45)  thinks  the  imputation  is  at 
least  plausible. 

Andronicus,  Titus,  in  a  tragedy  of 
that  name  wrongfully  attributed  to 
Shakespeare  and  printed  in  the  First 
Folio  (1623),  a  noble  Roman  general 
of  an  army  sent  against  the  Goths. 

Angel,  Miss,  heroine  and  title  of  a 
novel  (1875)  by  Miss  Thackeray 
(Mrs.  Richmond  Ritchie),  founded 
on  the  real  story  of  Angelica  Kaufman 
( 1 741-1807),  a  Swiss  by  birth  who 
earned  a  great  reputation  in  London 
as  a  portrait  painter  while  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  was  president  of  the  Royal 
Academy.  She  is  mentioned  in  one 
of  Goldsmith's  songs,  frequently 
appears  in  Reynolds'  journals  (there 
is  a  legend  that  he  was  in  love  with 
her),  corresponded  with  Iflopstock 
and  is  admiringly  alluded  to  by 
Goethe.  Beautiful  and  rarely  gifted, 
she  was  entrapped  into  a  disastrous 
marriage  with  one  "  Count  de  Horn." 
He  turned  out  to  be  a  valet  who  had 
stolen  the  wardrobe  and  credentials 
of  the  real  count.  Cherbuliez  has 
utilized  the  story  in  another  form  in 
Samuel  Brohl  and  Co. 

Angelica,  heroine  of  Bojardo's 
Orlando  Innamorato  (1495)  and  of 
its  sequel,  the  Orlando  Furioso  of 
Ariosto.    She  frequently  appears  in 


Angelica 


21 


Antonio 


the  works  of  their  successors  and 
imitators.  Though  there  are  some 
hints  of  a  character  of  this  sort  in  the 
early  Carlovingian  romances,  she  was 
practically  an  invention  of  Bojardo, 
whom  Ariosto  accepted  and  involved 
in  fresh  adventures.  Daughter  of 
Galaphron,  the  Saracen  king  of 
Cathay,  she  was  dispatched  to  Paris 
for  the  purpose  of  disrupting  Chris- 
tendom by  her  beauty.  Many  of 
Charlemagne's  paladins  did  fall  in 
love  with  her  to  their  own  undoing. 
Chief  among  these  was  Orlando. 
Rinaldo,  accidentally  fortified  against 
her  wiles  by  drinking  of  the  fountain 
of  hatred,  avoided  and  flouted  her. 
She  on  her  side  had  drunk  of  the 
complementary  fountain  of  love  and 
had  incontinently  become  violently 
enamored  of  Rinaldo.  Hence  many 
amatory  entanglements,  not  the  least 
curious  of  which  occurs  when  the 
conditions  are  reversed.  Rinaldo 
drinking  from  the  fountain  of  love 
and  Angelica  from  the  other  exchange 
sentiments.  In  the  end  she  married 
Medoro,  whereupon  Orlando  went 
mad.  His  madness  is  the  theme  of 
Ariosto's  poem. 

Angelica,  in  Congreve's  comedy. 
Love  for  Love  (1695),  the  ward  of  Sir 
Sampson  Legend  and  in  love  with 
Valentine,  for  whose  sake  she  jilts 
her  guardian.  Angelica  is  supposed 
to  represent  Mrs.  Bracegirdle;  Val- 
entine, the  author  himself,  who  was 
enamored  of  the  actress,  and  was  the 
rival  of  the  dramatist,  Rowe,  in  her 
affections. 

Angelica,  Princess,  in  Thackeray's 
burlesque  juvenile  story,  The  Rose 
and  the  Ring.  The  only  child  of  King 
Valoroso,  bad-tempered,  selfish  and 
really  ugly,  although  she  looks  beau- 
tiful so  long  as  she  wears  the  magic 
ring  which  her  cousin  Giglio  has 
given  her,  or  the  magic  rose  which 
Prince  Bulbo  has  worn.  In  one  period 
of  recovered  beauty  she  marries 
Bulbo  and  we  are  left  to  hope  that 
the  misfortimes  which  attended  her 
at  staccato  intervals  when  she  was 
ringless  and  roseless  and  therefore 
unbeautiftd  have  taught  her  good 
sense  and  good  nature. 


Angiolina,  in  Byron's  tragedy 
Marino  Faliero  (see  Faliero),  the 
young  wife  of  the  septuagenarian 
Doge  whom  she  seeks  to  dissuade  from 
entering  the  conspiracy  which  results 
in  his  death. 

Annie  of  Tharaw  (Ger.  Angke  von 
Thar  aw),  subject  of  a  song  by 
Simon  von  Dach  (circa  1630),  who 
is  highly  praised  throughout  in  a 
vein  of  bitter  irony.  The  poet,  it 
is  said,  smarting  under  the  faith- 
lessness of  his  lady  love,  sarcas- 
tically painted  her  as  loyal,  tender, 
gentle,  the  very  reverse  in  short, 
of  what  she  really  was.  In 
after  life,  it  is  added,  he  regretted 
this  poetical  revenge.  The  song 
seemed  to  haunt  him  even  on  his 
death  bed.  "Ah!"  he  exclaimed 
after  each  spasm  of  pain,  "  that  was 
for  the  song  of  Angke  von  Tharaw!  " 
Longfellow's  translation  admirably 
rendered  the  simple  charm  of  the 
original.  It  is  said  that  Ann  Hath- 
away, a  poem  attributed  to  Shakes- 
peare, is  a  similar  ironical  compliment 
to  the  poet's  wife. 

Anselmo,  hero  of  a  tale.  The  Curi- 
ous Impertinent,  which  is  included  in 
Cervantes'  Don  Quixote,  i,iv,6  (1605). 
A  noble  cavalier  of  Florence,  newly 
married  to  the  beautiful  Camilla,  he 
foolishly  persuades  his  friend  Lo- 
thario to  lay  siege  to  her  in  the  abso- 
lute certainty  that  she  will  surmount 
the  test.  Lothario  reluctantly  con- 
sents and  succeeds  all  too  well.  At 
first  the  couple  keep  their  secret  but 
eventually  they  elope.  Anselmo  dies 
of  grief;  Lothario  seeks  death  on  the 
battlefield;  Camilla  ends  her  life  in  a 
convent. 

Antipholus  of  Ephesus  and  Anti- 
pholus  of  Syracuse,  in  Shakespeare's 
Comedy  of  Errors,  twin  sons  of 
^geon  and  Emilia. 

Anton,  Sir,  in  the  Arthurian  cycle 
was,  according  to  Tennyson,  the 
knight  to  whom  Merlin  confided 
King  Arthur  when  an  infant  and  who 
brought  him  up  as  his  own  son. 
Malory  makes  Sir  Ector  the  prince's 
fosterfather. 

Antonio,  in  J.  F.  Cooper's  novel, 
The  Bravo,  an  old  fisherman. 


Antonio 


22 


Aouda 


Another  very  well-drawn  character.  The 
scene  in  which  he  is  shrived  by  the  Carmelite 
monk,  in  his  boat,  under  the  midnight  moon, 
upon  the  Lagoons,  is  one  of  the  finest  we 
know  of  in  the  whole  range  of  the  literature 
of  fiction,  leaving  upon  the  mind  a  lasting 
impression  of  solemn  and  pathetic  beauty. — 
Atlantic  Monthly. 

Antonio,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
Twelfth  Night,  a  sea-captain  whose 
friendship  for  Sebastian  and  other 
loyal  traits  established  the  "  old  sea- 
dog  "  tradition  in  fiction  and  the 
drama. 

Antony,  hero  of  a  tragedy  of  that 
name  (1831)  by  Alexander  Dumas. 
Obscure,  illegitimate,  a  misanthrope, 
he  loves  Adele  as  passionately  as  he 
hates  mankind.  She  loves  him  in 
return;  he  is  too  proud  to  offer  her 
his  hand;  but  after  she  has  married 
Colonel  d'Hervey  he  wins  her  by 
stratagem  and  violence.  Dumas  has 
told  in  his  Memoirs  how  the  idea 
came  to  him  for  the  terrific  denoue- 
ment: "  One  day  I  was  stroUing 
along  the  Boulevards  when  I  stopped 
short  all  at  once  and  said  to  myself — ■ 
*  Suppose  a  man  surprised  by  the 
husband  of  his  mistress  were  to  kill 
her,  saying  that  she  had  resisted  him, 
and  was  thus  to  save  her  honor.*" 
This  is  all  very  well.  It  has  since 
been  shown,  however,  that  he  had 
borrowed  the  situation  from  Emile 
Souvestre.  We  are  further  told  that 
as  the  curtain  fell  on  the  last  act 
shouts  of  terror  and  grief  burst  from 
the  audience;  they  called  for  the 
author  with  "  cries  of  fury."  The 
whole  audience  was  stupefied  and 
confounded  by  the  original  and 
ingenious  situation. 

Dumas  himself  would  have  us  believe 
that  Antony  is  a  portrait  of  himself,  and  of 
his  own  emotions  at  the  time.  The  object 
of  his  passion  was  a  lady  whose  husband  was 
an  officer  absent  on  service.  One  day  she 
received  a  letter  from  him  announcing  his 
return.  "I  thought  I  should  go  mad.  I 
rushed  to  one  of  my  friends,  who  was  em- 
ployed at  the  War  Office.  Three  times  the 
officer's  leave  of  absence,  duly  signed  and 
ready  to  be  sent  off,  was  torn  up  or  burnt  by 
this  friend."  This  may  be  a  piece  of 
romance:  but  that  such  an  idea  should  sug- 
gest itself  shows  how  lamentablv  confused 
were  the  writer's  notions  of  honor  and 
morality. — Percy  Fitzgerald,  Life  and 
Adventures  of  Dumas,  ii,  219. 


Antony,  Mark  (83-30  b.c),  the 
nephew  of  Julius  Caesar,  is  a  chief 
character  in  Shakespeare's  play  Julius 
Ccesar,  and  the  hero  of  Shakespeare's 
Antony  and  Cleopatra  (1608)  and 
Dryden's  All  for  Love,  or  The  World 
Well  Lost  (1678).  The  first  play 
deals  with  the  conspiracy  against 
Caesar's  life,  Antony's  oration  over 
Caesar's  dead  body,  and  his  victory 
over  the  conspirators  Brutus  and 
Cassius  at  Philippi  (b.c.  42).  The 
second  and  the  third  plays  deal 
with  his  love  for  Cleopatra,  Queen 
of  Egypt.  Coleridge  advises  that 
Shakespeare's  play  be  perused  "  in 
mental  contrast  with  Romeo  and 
Juliet  as  the  love  of  passion  and  appe- 
tite as  opposed  to  the  love  of  affection 
and  instinct,"  and  adds:  "  If  you 
would  feel  the  judgment  as  well  as 
the  genius  of  Shakespeare  in  your 
heart's  core  compare  this  astonishing 
drama  with  Dryden's  All  for  Love  J* 

Anville,  Evelina,  the  heroine  of 
Evelina  (1778),  a  novel  by  Fanny 
Burney  (Madame  D'Arblay)  depict- 
ing, as  the  sub-title  indicates,  the 
nature  and  behavior  of  A  Young 
Lady  on  her  Entrance  in  the  World. 
She  is  a  very  girUsh,  amiable,  genu- 
ine, tmaffected  young  lady,  and  her 
social  path  is  strewn  with  difficulty 
because  she  has  certain  vulgar  city 
cousins,  offspring  of  an  avuncular 
mesalliance  (see  Brangtons),  who 
complicate  her  relations  with  the 
finer  world  to  which  she  belongs  by 
instinct,  breeding  and  here(£tary 
right. 

Before  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  there  had 
been  no  English  fiction  in  which  the  loveli- 
ness of  family  life  had  made  itself  felt;  before 
Evelina  the  heart  of  girlhood  had  never  been 
so  fully  opened  in  literature.  There  had 
been  girls  and  girls,  but  none  in  whom  the 
traits  and  actions  of  the  girls  familiar  to 
their  fathers,  brothers  and  lovers  were  so 
fully  recognized;  and  the  contemporaneity 
instantly  felt  in  Evelina  has  lasted  to  tmi 
day. — W.  D.  Howells,  Heroines  of  Fiaion, 
vol.  I,  14. 

Aouda,  in  Jules  Verne's  romance, 
Around  the  World  in  Eighty  Days,  a 
young  and  beautiful  Hindoo  widow 
who  is  saved  from  suttee  and  even- 
tually married  by  Phileas  Fogg. 


Apemantus 


23 


Aram 


Apemantus,  in  Shakespeare's 
Timon  of  Athens  (1600),  a  churlish 
Athenian  philosopher,  whose  affected 
cynicism  is  strikingly  contrasted 
with  the  profound  misanthropy  of 
Timon.  Schlegel  in  his  Dramatic 
Art  especially  praises  "  the  incom- 
parable scene  "  (iv,  3)  where  he  visits 
Timon  in  the  wilderness:  "  they 
have  a  sort  of  competition  with 
each  other  in  the  trade  of  mis- 
anthropy." 

Apollodorus,  in  W.  E.  Aytoun's 
burlesque,  Firmiliany  a  Spasmodic 
Tragedy  (1854),  is  meant  for  George 
Gilfinnan,  a  Scotch  critic  of  more 
fervor  than  discrimination,  who  was 
especially  loud  in  his  applause  of 
the  "Spasmodic  School"  of  poets. 
Carlyle  had  ever  a  good  word  for  the 
compatriot,  who  was  one  of  the  first 
to  welcome  his  Sartor  Resartus  as  a 
work  of  genius.  But  Tennyson 
resented  Gilfinnan's  criticism  of  him- 
self. 

Apollyon,  in  Btmyan's  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  Part  I,  an  evil  spirit  with 
whom  Christian  has  a  terrible  en- 
counter, from  which  he  emerges  vic- 
torious. 

Aprile,  in  Robert  Browning's  poem 
Paracelsus,  the  ItaUan  poet  who 
forms  a  complement  to  the  hero, 
living  for  love  as  Paracelsus  lives  for 
knowledge.  Browning  calls  them 
"  the  two  halves  of  a  dissevered 
world."  To  a  certain  extent  the 
portrait  was  influenced  by  Shelley. 

Aquilina,  a  courtesan  in  Paris  under 
the  Restoration  and  Louis  Philippe, 
who  appears  in  several  of  Balzac's 
novels.  Ostensibly  a  Piedmontese  of 
obscure  birth,  she  had  borrowed  her 
nam  de  guerre  from  Otway's  Venice 
Preserved,  which  chance  had  thrown 
in  her  way.  In  Melmuth  Reconciled 
she  is  the  friend  of  Castanier  Nucin- 
gen's  cashier  and  has  other  intrigues. 
In  The  Wild  Ass's  Skin  {La  Peau  de 
Chagrin)  she  is  the  companion  of 
Rastignac  and  others  at  a  famous 
orgy  in  Rue  Joubert. 

Aram,  Eugene,  hero  of  a  novel  of 
that  name  (1832)  by  Bulwer  Lytton, 
founded  on  a  celebrated  case  in 
English    criminal    annals.      Eugene 


Aram  (1704-1759),  a  schoohnaster  of 
superior  intelligence  in  Knaresbor- 
ough,  was  the  intimate  friend  of 
Daniel  Clarke,  a  shoemaker  who  in 
1745  mysteriously  disappeared  after 
having  purchased  a  lot  of  goods  on 
credit.  Aram  was  suspected  of 
being  impUcated  with  him  in  a  con- 
spiracy to  defraud,  was  arrested,  but 
discharged  for  lack  of  evidence. 
Fourteen  years  later  he  was  again 
arrested,  this  time  on  the  charge  of 
murdering  Clarke.  A  skeleton  had 
been  dug  up  near  Knaresborough, 
Mrs.  Aram  had  made  some  compro- 
mising admissions,  and  finally  a  man 
named  Houseman  confessed  that  he 
had  been  present  at  the  murder  of 
Clarke  by  Aram.  The  latter,  despite 
a  brilliant  defence  conducted  by  him- 
self, was  convicted  on  August  3, 
1759.  He  confessed  his  guilt  after 
condemnation.  The  night  before  his 
execution  he  composed  a  short  poem 
in  defence  of  suicide,  opened  a  vein 
in  his  arm,  but  failed  to  cheat  the 
gallows. 

Bulwer  represents  his  hero  as  an 
aspiring  student  who  joins  Houseman 
in  the  murder  of  Clarke  only  that  he 
may  obtain  money  to  prosecute  his 
own  lofty  speculations.  Now  Clarke 
was  the  assimied  name  of  Geoffrey 
Lester.  The  miurderer,  all  unwitting 
of  this  fact,  takes  up  a  new  residence 
next  door  to  the  house  in  which  Uve 
Lester's  brother  and  son.  The  son 
conceives  an  imaccountable  loathing 
for  the  mysterious  stranger,  which  is 
increased  on  finding  that  his  cousin 
MadeUne  Lester,  whom  he  passion- 
ately loves,  no  less  ardently  loves 
Eugene.  A  series  of  clues,  followed 
up  one  by  one,  reveals  to  young 
Lester,  first  the  acknowledged  facts 
of  Aram's  intimacy  with  his  father, 
and  then  the  hitherto  unsuspected 
crime.  He  hastens  to  his  uncle's  and 
seizes  the  murderer  when  dressed  to 
lead  his  bride  to  the  altar.  At  the 
trial  Aram  makes  a  briUiant  defence, 
but  is  convicted  and  later  confesses, 
opens  his  veins  in  a  slovenly  fashion, 
is  borne  still  breathing  to  the  gallows, 
and  expires  while  the  hangman  is 
fitting  the  noose. 


Aramls 


24 


Arbuton 


Bulwer's  novel  has  been  imitated 
by  the  Russian  Dostoviesky  in  a 
novel,  Crime  and  Punishment  (1866), 
where  a  student  kills  a  miserly  old 
hag  with  the  intention  of  using  her 
money  for  praiseworthy  purposes. 
Thackeray  has  burlesqued  Bulwer's 
hero  in  George  de  Barnwall  (see 
Barnwall).  Thomas  Hood  has  a 
gruesome  ballad  called  The  Dream  of 
Eugene  Aram  (1845).  W.  G.  Wills 
produced  a  tragedy  (1873)  in  which 
Henry  Irving  played  Aram. 

Aramis,  in  Alexander  Dimias*  histo- 
rical romance,  The  Three  Guardsmen, 
one  of  the  titular  trio.  See  Artagnan. 

Aramis,  who  has  resigned  the  black 
coat  of  an  abb6  in  order  that  as  a 
layman  he  might  resent  an  unbearable 
insult,  combines  a  leaning  towards 
piety  and  the  church  with  all  the  airs 
of  an  accomplished  gallant,  full  of 
delicate  secrecies  about  his  bonnes 
fortunes  in  detail  but  redolent  of 
them  in  the  gross. 

There  was  a  basis  of  fact  to  this 
portrait.  The  actual  name  of  the 
original  was  Henry  d'Aramitz.  He 
was  not  a  churchman,  but  the  fact 
that  he  was  the  lay  abbot  of  Aramitz, 
near  Oleron,  made  him  waver  with 
some  inconsistency  between  ostensible 
piety  and  ambition.  He  never  held 
orders  and  history  gives  no  sanction 
to  any  romantic  love  affair  with  the 
pretty  Duchesse  de  Chevreuse.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  M.  d'Aramitz 
married  into  the  Beam-Bonasse 
family  and  vanished  into  domesticity. 
His  greatest  exploit  as  recorded  by 
Dumas  is  sheer  invention.  This  is  in 
The  Vicomte  de  Bragellone.  Aramis 
discovers  the  existence  of  a  twin 
brother  of  Louis  XIV  who  for  reasons 
of  state  has  been  concealed  ever  since 
his  birth.  He  conceives  the  stupen- 
dous idea  of  abducting  the  actual 
Louis  and  setting  up  his  double,  thus 
ensuring  a  king  who  will  owe  every- 
thing to  himself.  Even  his  personal 
safety  will  depend  upon  the  secrecy 
and  loyalty  of  Aramis,  who  dreams 
of  being  a  second  Richelieu — cardinal, 
prime  minister,  ruler  of  the  state. 
After  a  splendid  beginning  the  plot 
is  frustrated  by  Floquet.   Aramis  and 


Porthos  fly.  The  latter  meets  a  tragic 
death.  Meanwhile  the  real  Louis 
XIV  puts  his  brother  into  prison  as 
the  Iron  Mask. 

Aranza,  Duke  of,  in  John  Tobin's 
comedy  The  Honeymoon  (1804),  is 
the  bridegroom  of  JuHana,  a  lady  so 
haughty,  arrogant  and  shrewish  that 
Aranza  feigned  he  was  only  a  peasant, 
took  her  to  a  mean  hut,  and  told  her 
that  she  must  perform  aU  the  house- 
hold work.  Juliana  stormed  and 
chafed  for  a  period,  but  the  firm  will 
and  the  real  love  which  Aranza 
masked  under  the  pretence  of  severity 
finally  conquered.  Then  the  tamed 
and  domesticated  shrew  was  led  by 
the  duke  to  his  castle  and  he  revealed 
his  real  rank  to  her.  The  plot,  it  will 
be  seen,  has  likeness  in  some  points 
to  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew  (see 
Petruchio),  in  others  to  the  Lord 
of  Biurleigh  (see  Burleigh)  and  a 
curious  Hkeness  in  unlikeness  to  the 
Lady  of  Lyons. 

Arbaces,  in  John  Fletcher's  drama, 
A  King  or  no  King  (16 19),  a  mythical 
king  of  Iberia.  Classical  tradition 
mentions  a  prince  of  this  name  as  the 
founder  of  the  Median  Empire. 
Byron  recognizes  him  as  the  de- 
throner  of  Sandanapalus  in  the  drama 
of  that  title.  But  in  fiction  at  least 
the  name  has  won  its  highest  dis- 
tinction from  Bulwer's  Last  Days  of 
Pompeii,  where  Arbaces  is  an  Egyp- 
tian magician;  a  melodramatic  com- 
pound of  great  wickedness  with 
mighty  intellectual  powers,  living  in 
barbaric  splendor  and  sensuality. 
Reckless  of  all  restraints  of  con- 
science, holding,  indeed,  that  as  man 
had  imposed  those  checks  on  the 
vulgar  herd,  so  man  can  by  superior 
wisdom  raise  himself  above  them,  he 
establishes  a  dominion  over  the 
imagination  and  will-powers  of  others 
by  his  knowledge  of  the  esoteric 
mysteries  of  Isis,  whose  priests  are 
under  his  control  and  are  made  the 
instruments  of  his  crimes. 

Arbuton,  Miles,  leading  character 
in  W.  D.  Howells's  A  Chance  Ac- 
quaintance  (1873),  a  Boston  aristo- 
crat, wealthy,  exclusive,  narrow  and 
cold.    He  has  personal  attractiveness 


Arcadia 


25 


Arden 


of  a  certain  sort  enhanced  by  educa- 
tion and  foreign  travel,  yet  he  re- 
mains a  consummate  snob  whose  blue 
blood  freezes  at  any  reference  to  the 
South  End  in  his  native  city,  and  who 
finally  betrays  to  the  girl  he  truly 
loves  that  he  is  ashamed  of  her 
provincial  ways.  See  Ellison, 
Kitty. 

Arcadia,  an  imaginary  country  m 
which  Sir  Pliilip  Sidney  lays  the  scene 
of  his  pastoral  romance.  The  Countess 
of  Pembroke's  Arcadia  (i59o)-  Basi- 
lius,  Prince  of  Arcadia,  warned _  by 
an  oracle  of  dubious  meaning,  retired 
from  his  court  into  a  forest  where  he 
built  two  lodges,  in  one  of  which  he 
lived  with  his  queen,  Gyneceia,  and 
his  younger  daughter  Philoclea,  while 
in  the  other  his  elder  daughter  Pamela 
was  placed  under  the  care  of  a  clown, 
Dametas. 

Archer,  Mr.,  in  Thackeray's  novel 
Pendennis  (Chapter  xxx),  a  literary 
bohemian  who  pulls  the  long  bow. 
He  is  said  to  have  been  drawn  from 
Tom  Hill  of  the  Monthly  Mirror,  who 
was  also  the  Paul  Pry  {g.v.)  in  Poole's 
comedy  of  that  name. 

Archer,  Francis,  in  The  Beaux 
Stratagem,  a  comedy  (1707)  by  George 
Farquhar,  a  gentleman  who  has  come 
down  in  the  world  and  acts  as  con- 
fidential servant  to  Aimwell,  another 
broken-down  adventurer. 

The  most  successful  conception  is  that  of 
Archer,  who  pretends  to  be  the  valet  of  his 
friend  the  Beau,  but  carries  on  adventures 
on  his  own  account.  This  became  one  of 
Garrick's  most  famous  parts,  and,  indeed, 
the  easy  volubility  of  the  pretended  servant 
furnishes  an  admirable  opportunity  for  a 
fine  actor  of  light  comedy. — A.  W.  Ward, 
English  Dramatic  Literature,  vol.  3.  P-  485- 

Archer,  Isabel,  heroine  of  Henry 
James's  international  novel.  The 
Portrait  of  a  Lady  (1882).  A  New 
Englander  by  birth.  She  becomes  an 
heiress  in  old  England  through  the 
testamentary  dispositions  of  con- 
nections by  marriage,  and  succes- 
sively rejects  Lord  Warburton  ^  (be- 
cause she  cannot  love  him  and  wishes 
for  larger  maidenly  experiences)  and 
Caspar  Goodwood,  an  earnest  young 
New  Englander  (because  she  misses 
in  him  the  romantic  element  that 


craves),  and  finally  marries  Gilbert 
Ormonde,  a  man  without  rank  or 
fortune  but  of  exquisite  taste,  and, 
as  it  finally  turns  out,  of  abandoned 
morals.  See  Casamassima,  Princess. 
Archimago  or  Archimage,  in  Spen- 
ser's Faerie  Queene,  Books  i  and  ii, 
an  enchanter  typifying  the  principle 
of  evil — in  opposition  to  the  Red 
Cross  knight  who  represents  holiness. 

By  his  mighty  science  he  could  take 
As  many  forms  and  shapes  in  seeming  wise 
As  ever  Proteus  to  himself  could  make: 
Sometime  a  fowl,  sometime  a  fish  in  lake, 
Now  like  a  fox,  now  like  a  dragon  fell; 
That  of  himself  he  oft  for  fear  would  quake. 
And  oft  would  fly  away.     Oh,  who  can  tell 
The  hidden  power  of  herbs,  and  might  of 
magic  spell?        Faerie  Queene,  i,  ii,  10. 

Assuming  the  guise  of  the  Red 
Cross  knight  he  deceived  Una;  imder 
the  guise  of  a  hermit  he  deceived  the 
knight  himself. 

Arden,  Enoch,  hero  and  title  of  a 
narrative  poem  (1864)  by  Tennyson. 
Enoch  and  Philip,  the  one  a  poor 
sailor  lad,  the  other  son  of  the 
wealthiest  man  in  an  English  sea- 
coast  village,  are  playmates  in  boy- 
hood of  little  Annie  and  rivals  for 
her  hand  in  early  manhood.  Enoch 
wins  her.  Shortly  after  marriage, 
poverty  forces  iiim  to  go  on  a  long 
sea  voyage.  He  is  shipwrecked  on  an 
iminhabited  island  in  the  tropics  and 
spends  many  years  in  Crusoe-like 
solitude.  Rescued  at  last  by  a  passing 
vessel,  he  returns  home  to  find  Annie 
married  to  Philip.  UnwilUng  to  dis- 
turb her  happiness  he  does  not  reveal 
his  identity  until  his  death. 

Enoch  Arden  is  a  true  hero  after  the 
highest  conception  of  a  hero.  He  is  as  great 
as  King  Arthur — by  his  unconquerable  will 
and  by  a  conscious  and  deliberate  bowing 
before  love  and  duty.— H.  A.  Taine,  English 
Literature. 

The  story  of  Enoch  Arden,  as  he  has 
enhanced  and  presented  it,  is  a  rich  and 
splendid  composite  of  imagery  and  illus- 
tration. Yet  how  simple  that  story  is  in 
itself.  A  sailor  who  sells  fish,  breaks  his  leg, 
gets  dismal,  gives  up  selling  fish,  goes  to  sea, 
is  wrecked  on  a  desert  island,  stays  there 
some  years,  on  his  return  finds  his  wife 
married  to  a  miller,  speaks  to  a  landlady  on 
the  subject  and  dies  .  .  .  Itistniethat 
he  acts  rightly,  that  he  is  very  good.  But 
such  is  human  nature  that  it  finds  a  little 
tameness  in  mere  morality. — Walter 
B AGEHOT,  Wordsworth,  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing (1864). 


Arden  26 

Arden,  Forest  of  (Celtic  Ard,  great, 
and  den,  a  wooded  valley),  the  scene 
of  Shakespeare's  comedy,  As  You 
Like  It,  is  generally  identified  \yith 
a  forest  of  that  name  in  Warwick- 
shire. Originally  this  covered  nearly 
the  whole  shire,  but  by  the  eleventh 
century  wide  clearings  had  been  made 
in  it,  and  only  poetical  license  could 
then  figure  the  forest  as  a  wood 
nymph  touching  Trent  with  one 
hand  and  Severn  with  the  other. 

In  Shakespeare's  day  it  stiU  con- 
tained enough  thickets  and  sylvan 
retreats  to  make  his  Arden  a  faith- 
ful representation.  Then  as  now, 
however,  Shakespeare's  fauna  and 
flora  were  unknown  there.  Lions  did 
not  lash  their  tails  there.  To-day  the 
forest  has  shrunk  into  a  few  stretches 
of  woodland  but  still  survives  in  cer- 
tain village  names :  Henley-in- Arden, 
Weston-in- Arden,  etc.  Michael  Dray- 
ton in  his  Polyolbion,  xiii,  gives 
a  description  of  the  Warwickshire 
forest  which  tallies  substantially  with 
Shakespeare's  Arden.  Nevertheless 
some  commentators  have  held  that 
Arden  is  the  French  forest  of 
Ardennes. 

Arden,  Thomas,  of  Feversham, 
chief  male  character  in  an  anonymous 
tragedy  sometimes  ascribed  (falsely) 
to  Shakespeare,  founded  on  a  real 
happening  thus  described  in  the 
original  title  page:  The  Lamentable 
and  True  Tragedie  oj  M.  Arden  of 
Feversham  in  Kent.  Who  was  most 
wickedly e  murdered,  by  the  meanes  of 
his  disloyall  and  wanton  wyfe,  who  for 
the  love  she  bare  to  one  Mosbie,  hyred 
two  desperate  ruffians,  Blackwill  and 
Shakbag,  to  kill  him  (1592).  The 
crime  happened  in  155 1.  It  is  fully 
described  in  Holinshed's  Chronicle, 
which  is  here  closely  followed.  The 
first  four  acts  are  taken  up  with  suc- 
cessive attempts  upon  the  life  of  the 
unsuspecting  Arden,  who  always 
escapes  by  some  unlooked-for  acci- 
dent until  finally  stabbed  in  his  own 
house  at  the  beginning  of  Act  v.  The 
rest  of  the  last  act  pictures  the  dis- 
covery and  condemnation  of  the 
murderers.  The  dramatist  makes  no 
attempt    to    awaken    sympathy    or 


Argyle 

pity  for  Arden,  who  is  painted  in  all 
his  native  avarice,  cruelty,  stupidity 
and  insensate  credulity. 

Ardennes,  Forest  of,  the  Ar duenna 
Sylva  of  Caesar  and  Tacitus.  It  still 
exists,  though  in  shrunken  propor- 
tions, in  northeast  France  between 
the  Meuse  and  the  Moselle,  extending 
beyond  the  French  border  into  Bel- 
giimi.  Lord  Byron,  in  Childe  Harold, 
describes  the  English  army  passing 
through  the  forest  on  their  way  to 
the  battle  of  Waterloo. 

And  Ardennes  waves  above  them  her  green 

leaves. 
Dewy   with   Nature's   tear-drops,   as   they 

pass — 
Grieving,  if  aught  inanimate  e'er  grieves. 
Over  the  unreturning  brave, — alas! 
Ere  evening  to  be  trodden  like  the  grass 
Which  now  beneath  them,  but  above  shall 

grow 
In  its  next  verdure,  when  this  fiery  mass 
Of  living  Valour,  rolling  on  the  foe 
And  burning  with  high  Hope,  shall  moulder 


cold  and  low. 


Childe  Harold,  iii,  27. 


Malone  and  other  commentators 
identify  the  Forest  of  Arden  in  As 
You  Like  It  with  Ardennes.  But 
Furness  holds  it  evident  from  the  bits 
of  description  and  the  allusion  to 
Robin  Hood  that  Shakespeare  meant 
to  keep  his  audience  at  home,  no 
matter  in  whatsoever  foreign  country 
the  scene  be  laid. 

Ardennes,  Wild  Boar  of.  See 
Wild  Boar  of  Ardennes. 

Aresby,  Captain,  in  Fanny  Bumey 
(Madame  D'Arblay's)  Cecilia,  a  cap- 
tain in  the  militia  full  of  affecta- 
tions— "  a  most  petrifying  wretch." 

Argantes,  in  Tasso's  epic,  Jerusa- 
lem Delivered  (1575),  one  of  the 
fiercest  and  bravest  leaders  of  the 
infidel  hosts  against  the  Christians, 
standing  second  to  Solyman.  He  was 
finally  slain  by  Rinaldo,  and  Solyman 
by  Tancred. 

Argyle,  Archibald,  Marquis  of, 
nicknamed  Gramach  (the  "  ill- 
favored  "),  figures  unfavorably  in 
Scott's  novel,  The  Legend  of  Montrose. 
Outgeneralled  by  Montrose,  his  army 
was  completely  routed  at  Inverlochy, 
while  he  himself  incurred  contempt 
by  watching  the  battle  from  the 
safety  of  a  galley  on  the  loch. 


Argyle 

Argyle,  John,  Duke  of  (1678-1743), 
appears  in  two  of  Scott's  novels,  Rob 
Roy  and  The  Heart  of  Midlothian. 
He  has  little  to  do  in  the  first  but  in 
the  second  he  takes  a  prominent  part 
as  the  courtier  who  introduces  Jeanie 
Deans  to  Queen  Caroline,  a  doubly- 
irksome  task  because  he  was  in  ill 
favor  with  her  majesty  owing  to  his 
opposition  to  the  seven  measures 
proposed  against  Edinburgh  after 
the  Porteous  Riot. 

Ariel,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
The  Tempest  (1609),  the  favorite 
messenger  of  Prospero,  an  airy  and 
fanciful  creation  who  unites  in  him- 
self the  powers  of  all  elemental  spirits. 

"At  one  time  he  appears  as  a  sea  elf, 
swimming  and  careering  amid  the  waves; 
then  as  a  fire  spirit  who  sets  the  ship  on  fire 
and  climbs  like  licking  flame  up  the  mast; 
then  as  a  spirit  of  earth,  buried  for  Prospero 
in  the  frozen  veins  of  the  ground.  His  ruling 
nature,  however,  as  his  name  implies,  is  that 
of  a  sylph,  a  spirit  of  the  air." — Gervinus, 
Shakespeare's  Characters. 

Before  Prospero's  advent  on  the 
island,  Ariel  had  been  in  the  service 
of  the  witch  Sycorax,  but  being  too 
delicate  for  her  "  earthly  and  ab- 
horred commands  "  he  disobeyed  her 
and  she  confined  him  in  a  cloven  pine. 
Prospero  set  him  free  after  twelve 
years'  imprisonment. 

Goethe  in  Faust t  Part  li,  Act  i, 
Sc.  I,  introduces  Ariel  as  the  leader 
of  the  elves  in  the  intermezzo  of  the 
Walpurgis  Night. 

Ariel,  the  name  which  Shelley  half 
sportively  applied  to  himself.  Leigh 
Himt  justifies  the  appellation.  "  If 
Coleridge,"  he  says,  "  is  the  sweetest 
of  our  poets,  Shelley  is  at  once  the 
most  ethereal  and  gorgeous,  the  one 
who  has  clothed  his  thought  in  drap- 
eries of  the  most  evanescent  and  most 
magnificent  words  and  imagery.  .  . 
Shelley  .  .  .  might  well  call  him- 
self Ariel."  There  is  a  melancholy 
interest  in  the  fact  that  when  Shelley 
purchased  the  little  fishing  smack  in 
which  he  eventually  met  his  death  he 
renamed  it  The  Ariel. 

Anus  (280-336),  a  priest  of  the 
Early  Church,  the  founder  of  the 
so-called  Arian  heresy,  who  refused  to 
subscribe  to  the  Nicean  creed  formu- 


27  Armida 

lated  at  the  Council  at  Nice,  is  the 
hero  of  a  romance,  Arius  the  Libyan, 
an  Idyl  of  the  Primitive  Church,  by 
Nathan  Chapman  Kouns. 

Ark,  Henry,  one  of  the  principal 
characters  in  Cooper's  novel.  The 
Red  Rover  (1827),  lieutenant  on  the 
British  man-of-war  Dart.  Disguised 
as  a  common  sailor,  under  the  name 
of  Wilder  he  ships  aboard  the  pirate 
craft  of  the  "Red  Rover"  in  order  to 
betray  that  notorious  freebooter  to 
justice. 

Armado,  Don  Adriano  de,  in 
Shakespeare's  comedy.  Love's  Labor's 
Lost  (1594),  a  fantastical  Spaniard,  a 
braggart  and  a  pedant  who  supplies 
the  farcical  underplot  by  his  wooing 
of  Jaquenetta,  a  country  girl,  beloved 
also  by  the  clown  Costard.  Costard 
offers  to  fight  him  in  his  shirt  and 
Armado  has  to  confess  that  he  has  no 
shirt.  The  Pedant  in  Act  v,  Sc.  i, 
supplies  a  famous  description  of  Don 
Armado: 

His  humor  is  lofty,  his  discourse  per- 
emptory: his  tongue  filed,  his  eye  ambi- 
tious, his  gait  majestical,  and  his  general 
behavior  vain,  ridiculous  and  thrasonical. 
.  .  .  He  draweth  out  the  thread  of  his 
verbosity  finer  than  the  staple  of  his  argu- 
ment. 

In  him,  as  in  the  preposterous 
Holof ernes  {q.v.)  and  the  pedantic 
curate  Sir  Nathaniel,  the  poet  satir- 
izes the  euphuistic  affectations  intro- 
duced by  John  Lyly.  But  it  is  going 
too  far  to  identify  Armado  with  Lyly 
himself. 

Armande,  one  of  the  titular 
"  Learned  Ladies "  in  Moli^re's 
comedy,  Les  Femmes  Savantes,  the 
prototype  of  the  perennial  blue  stock- 
ing. She  is  differentiated  from  her 
mother  Philaminte  by  adding  a  touch 
of  prudery  to  her  pedantry — ^feigning 
to  put  the  pleasures  of  the  mind  above 
those  of  the  senses  while  allowing  us 
to  suspect  that  her  own  thoughts 
dwell  unduly  and  unpleasantly  on 
more  material  things. 

Armida,  in  Tasso's  Jerusalem  De- 
livered, a  sorceress  of  the  Circe  type, 
daughter  of  Chariclea,  the  queen  of 
Damascus,  by  the  plebeian  Arbilan. 
Satan  sent  her  into  the  camp  of  God- 


Armstrong 


28 


Amolphe 


frey  de  Bouillon,  where  she  seduced 
50  Crusaders  away  from  the  siege  of 
Jerusalem  and  later  Rinaldo  (q.v.), 
whom  she  conducted  to  a  magnificent 
palace.  Here  he  abandoned  himself 
to  a  life  of  sinful  luxury  until  rescued 
by  Carlo  and  Ubaldo.  She  followed 
him  but,  having  lost  her  power  over 
him,  went  mad,  burned  her  palace 
and  exiled  herself  to  Egypt.  Here 
she  offered  to  marry  any  one  who 
would  slay  Rinaldo.  She  herself 
unsuccessfully  aimed  an  arrow  at  him 
and  then  failed  in  an  effort  on  her 
own  life. 

Armstrong,  John,  hero  of  Scott's 
tale,  Death  of  the  Laird's  Jock  (1827). 
He  is  known  as  "  the  Laird's  Jock  " 
even  after  his  father's  death  leaves 
him  the  Laird  of  Mangerton.  With 
his  huge  two-handed  sword  he  was 
the  unrivalled  champion  of  the 
Border  counties.  When  he  became 
old  and  helpless  he  entrusted  the 
sword  to  his  son,  but  the  English 
champion  Poster  won  it  away  in  fair 
combat  and  "  with  a  cry  of  indigna- 
tion, horror  and  despair  "  the  Laird's 
Jock  threw  up  his  hands  and  fell  dead. 

Arnold,  hero  of  Byron's  dramatic 
poem,  The  Deformed  Transformed. 
He  is  the  hunchback  son  of  Bertha, 
who  hates  him  as  he  hates  himself  for 
his  deformity.  >  Weary  of  life,  he  is 
about  to  kill  himself  when  a  demon 
promises  to  turn  him  into  any  shape 
that  pleases  him,  provided  he  will 
surrender  his  soul  after  twenty-four 
years  of  earthly  experience.  Arnold 
consents;  the  shades  of  the  heroes  of 
the  past  are  summoned  up  in  suc- 
cession. Arnold  chooses  the  body  of 
Achilles  for  temporary  tenantship, 
goes  to  Rome;  joins  the  besieging 
army  of  Bourbon  and  enters  the 
church  of  St.  Peter's  just  in  time  to 
rescue  Olympia.  But  the  proud 
beauty,  to  escape  being  taken  captive 
by  him,  leaps  from  the  high  altar  to 
the  pavement.  Here  the  fragment 
comes  to  an  end. 

In  this  character  Byron  pictures 
the  agonies  that  his  own  spirit  had 
endured  from  morbid  consciousness 
of  the  deformity  in  his  feet.  In  the 
first  line  of  the  first  scene  Bertha 


cries,  "  Out,  hunchback!  "  "I  was 
born  so,  mother,"  returns  Arnold. 
In  his  own  Life,  Moore  quotes  these 
lines  and  contrasts  them  with  a  pas- 
sage in  Byron's  Memorabilia,  record- 
ing his  horror  and  humiliation  when 
his  mother,  in  one  of  her  fits  of  pas- 
sion, called  him  "  a  lame  brat." 
Moore  questions  "  whether  that 
whole  drama  was  not  indebted  for  its 
origin  to  that  single  recollection." 
Byron  acknowledges  his  indebted- 
ness to  a  novel.  The  Three  Brothers 
(1803),  by  Joshua  Pickersgill,  in 
which  the  hero,  Arnauld,  barters  his 
soul  to  a  demon  for  leave  to  inhabit 
for  twenty-four  years  the  body  of 
some  great  and  beautiful  hero  of 
antiquity.  He  chooses  to  be  Julian. 
Amolphe,  in  Moliere's  comedy, 
U Ecole  des  Femmes  {The  School  for 
Wives),  the  representative  of  jealous 
middle  age,  a  man  of  selfish  purpose 
and  rigid  theories,  ever  suspicious 
and  ever  deceived,  who  has  deter- 
mined to  train  up  a  model  wife  for 
himself  by  keeping  her  mind  unde- 
veloped by  learning  and  unpolluted 
by  any  knowledge  of  evil.  In  Agnes, 
a  girl  twenty  years  his  junior,  he 
fancies  he  has  discovered  the  proper 
material,  but  she  wofully_ disappoints 
him  in  the  end.  It  is  a  little  curious 
that  both  in  this  play  and  in  its  pred- 
ecessor Moliere's  mind  should  have 
been  occupied  with  the  subject  of 
mismated  marriages  just  at  the 
moment  when  he,  a  man  of  nearly 
forty,  was  about  to  marry  a  young 
girl  of  seventeen.  The  Ecole  des 
Maris  was  first  played  in  June,  1661, 
the  Ecole  des  Femmes  at  the  end  of 
1662.  Half-way  between,  in  Febru- 
ary, 1 662 ,  he  married  Armande  Bejart. 
See  Celimene. 

Was  it  Armande  Bejart  and  the  way  of 
training  her  to  be  the  best  of  wives  and 
woman  that  occupied  the  mature  lover;  or 
was  the  temptation  to  laugh  at  himself  and 
jeer  away  any  doubts  he  might  have, — or 
at  least  the  faculty  which  can  subsist  even 
without  genius,  of  seeing  the  ludicrous 
aspects  in  which  his  own  position  might 
appear  to  others, — the  influence  which  kept 
him  to  this  theme?  The  imagination  can 
scarcely  refuse  to  fancy  some  such  reason 
for  dwelling  on  such  a  subject. — Oliphant 
AND  Tkavbr,  MoMre. 


Artagnan 


29 


Arthur 


Artagnan,  Charles  de  Baatz,  Seig- 
neur d',  the  most  famous  of  all  the 
heroes  of  Alexander  Dimias.  In  that 
great  trilogy  of  historical  romances — 
The  Three  Musketeer s.  Twenty  Years 
After,  and  The  Vicomte  de  Brage- 
lonne — his  career  is  traced  from  the 
time  of  his  arrival  in  Paris,  a  lean  and 
hungry  Gascon  stripUng,  with  three 
crowns  in  his  pocket,  mounted  on  a 
raw-boned  yellow  pony,  until  his 
death  as  Comte  d'Artagnan,  Com- 
mander of  the  Musketeers  and  Mar- 
shal of  France.  The  historical  period 
covered  by  these  novels  extends  from 
1625  to  1665. 

On  his  first  day  in  Paris  young 
d'Artagnan,  fired  with  the  ambition 
to  enter  Louis  XIII 's  famous  corps 
of  musketeers,  contrives  to  entangle 
himself  in  three  duels  with  three  of 
the  most  dreaded  members  of  that 
body,  known  respectively  as  Athos, 
Porthos,  and  Aramis.  His  pluck, 
spirit  and  good  himior  win  their 
hearty  friendship.  Thereafter  all 
four,  sharing  alike  in  their  fortune 
or  misfortune,  pass  through  stirring 
adventures  in  France  and  England. 

Though  Dumas  makes  d'Artagnan 
the  central  figure  of  these  romances — 
the  man  whose  wit  and  courage  and 
infinite  resources  always  turn  the  tide 
when  fortune  seems  to  be  blackest — 
he  does  not  appeal  to  the  reader  as 
strongly  as  his  fellows.  There  is  a 
touch  of  worldly  wisdom,  an  almost 
Yankee  shrewdness — in  fine,  a  Gascon 
keenness  about  d'Artagnan  which 
robs  him  of  the  hearty  sympathy  we 
lavish  upon  the  others.  They  fall 
into  difficulties  and  are  overwhelmed 
by  disaster,  and  we  breathe  hard  and 
wonder  whether  they  will  escape,  and 
how.  We  never  feel  this  delightful 
suspense  in  the  case  of  d'Artagnan. 
We  know  that  he  is  always  sure  to 
come  out  on  top.  He  bears  a  charmed 
life.  His  author  will  not  let  him  fall 
or  fail.  He  can  dispense  with  our 
sympathy. 

Dumas's  character  is  drawn  largely  from 
the  genuine  memoirs  of  Charles  de  Batz- 
Castlemore  (1623-1673),  who  assumed  the 
name  d'Artagnan  (his  mother  was  a  Montes- 
quieu-d'Artagnan)  when  at  the  age  of  17  he 
set  out  for  Paris  with  a  letter  of  introduction 


to  Troisvilles,  Commandant  of  the  Muske- 
teer Guard.  He  was  warmly  welcomed  to 
Paris  by  his  fellow  countryman,  Isaac  de 
Portau.  who  had  changed  his  name  to 
Porthos,  and  through  him  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  the  guardsmen  who  called 
themselves  Athos  and  Aramis.  On  the  very 
day  of  his  enlistment  he  with  his  three  com- 
panions fought  and  overcame  four  of  Car- 
dinal Richelieu's  hirelings,  whereupon  Louis 
XIII  gave  the  boy  a  special  audience  and 
presented  him  with  fifty  ducats  and  a  cadet's 
commission.  From  then  his  advance  was 
rapid.  He  retained  Louis's  friendship  and 
gained  that  of  Cardinal  Mazarin.  He  mar- 
ried Mme.  de  Sainte  Croix,  widow  of  M.  de 
Dumas,  and  fell  as  field  marshal  at  the  siege 
of  Maastricht  in  the  Low  Countries  in  1673. 

Artaxaminous,  in  Bombastes  Furi- 
oso  (18 10),  a  burlesque  tragic  opera 
by  William  B.  Rhodes,  the  King  of 
Utopia,  married  to  Griskinissa  whom 
he  would  divorce.     See  Bombastes. 

Artegal,  Sir  (spelled  Arthegal  in 
the  first  three  books),  the  imperson- 
ation of  justice  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene.  Son  of  Prince  Gorlois  of 
Cornwall,  he  marries  Britomart  {q.v.) 
in  Book  iii;  but  his  career  as  an 
avenger  and  promoter  of  justice  takes 
up  aU  of  Book  v.  In  Canto  i  he  de- 
livers a  Solomon-like  decision  con- 
cerning the  ownership  of  a  woman. 
In  Canto  ii  he  destroys  the  corrupt 
practices  of  bribery  and  toll.  In 
Canto  iii  he  exposes  Braggadachio 
and  his  follower  Trompart.  In  Canto 
iv  he  gave  judgment  as  to  the  owner- 
ship of  a  chest  of  money  found  at 
sea.  In  Canto  v  he  fell  into  the 
hands  of  Radigimd,  Queen  of  the 
Amazons,  was  released  by  Britomart 
in  Canto  vi,  who  killed  Radigund  in 
Canto  vii.  His  last  and  greatest  feat 
was  the  deliverance  of  Irena  (Ireland) 
from  Grantorto  (great  wrong)  whom 
he  slew  in  Canto  xii,  an  obvious  allu- 
sion to  Desmond's  rebellion  in  1580. 
The  character  of  Artegal  is  meant  to 
represent  Spenser's  friend,  Lord  Grey, 
of  Wilton,  who  was  sent  (1580)  to 
Ireland  as  lord  lieutenant  with  the 
poet  as  his  secretary. 

Artful  Dodger.  See  Dawkins,  John. 

Arthur,  King,  the  national  hero  of 
England,  is  the  chief  figure  in  Tenny- 
son's Idylls  of  the  King.  In  outline 
Tennyson  follows  the  Arthurian 
romances  as  collated  and  harmonized 
by    Sir    Thomas    Malory's     Morte 


Arthur 


30 


Ashburton 


d' Arthur.  But  he  makes  some  vital 
changes,  notably  in  his  character- 
ization of  Arthur.  Malory  indeed  had 
dowered  him  with  every  virtue  save 
one.  He  dared  not  so  far  antagonize 
the  early  historians  and  romances  as 
to  give  him  a  stainless  chastity. 
Tennyson  does  this  and  so  eliminates 
the  curse,  the  crucial  element  in  the 
tragedy,  and  destroys  its  most  ap- 
palling and  at  the  same  time  most 
telling  feature.  It  was  Arthur's  own 
sin  of  incest  with  his  half-sister 
Margeuse  {q.v.)  that  brought  about 
the  downfall  of  all  his  hopes  and  the 
destruction  of  the  Round  Table 
through  its  own  impish  issue,  the 
treacherous  Mordred. 

In  Tennyson's  hands  Arthur  ap- 
pears not  only  as  the  perfect  ruler, 
the  suppressor  of  anarchy,  but  also 
as — 

The  great  and  gentle  lord 
Who  was  as  is  the  conscience  of  a  saint 
Among  his  warring  senses,  to  his  knights. 

When  the  subtle  and  malignant 
Vivien  attempts  to  sneer  at  the  king's 
blind  confidence  in  Guinevere,  Merlin 
cries  out: 

Oh  true  and  tender!    Oh~my  liege  and  king  I 

0  selfless  man  and  stainless  gentleman  1 

Guinevere  herself  has  tio  word  of 
blame  for  the  husband  she  has  be- 
trayed save  only  that  he  is  blameless. 

He  is  all  fault  that  has  no  fault  at  all. 
Elaine. 

But  in  the  poem  which  bears  her 
name  she  laments  too  late  that  she 
had  refused  to  understand  him. 

1  thought  I  could  not  breathe  in  that  fine 

air. 

In  the  same  poem  Arthur  explains 
his  purpose  in  organizing  the  Round 
Table  and  tells  the  repentant  Gene- 
viere  how  his  enterprise  had  succeeded 
until  her  guilt  and  its  consequences 
in  the  feud  with  Lancelot  had  brought 
in  confusion  and  civil  war  and  the 
invasion  of  the  Saxon  foe. 

To  any  one  knowing  his  Maleore,  know- 
ing that  Arthur's  own  sin  was  the  cause  of 
the  breaking  up  of  the  Round  Table,  and 
Guinevere's  the  means  only  through  which 


that  cause  worked  itself  out — having  felt 
Arthur's  almost  purposed  refusal  to  see 
what  was  going  on  under  his  own  eyes 
between  his  queen  and  Lancelot,  so  as  to 
save  a  quarrel  with  his  best  knight,  till  it 
was  forced  on  him;  having  watched  with 
what  a  sense  of  relief  as  it  were  Arthur 
waited  for  his  wife  to  be  burnt  on  her  second 
accusal — then  for  one  so  primed  to  come  on 
Tennyson's   representation  of  the  king  in 

gerfect  words,  with  tenderest  pathos,  re- 
earsing  to  his  prostrate  queen  his  own 
nobleness  and  her  disgrace;  the  revulsion  of 
feeling  was  too  great;  one  was  forced  to  say 
to  the  Flower  of  Kings,  "if  you  really  did 
this  you  were  the  Pecksniff  of  the  period." — 

F.   J.    FURNIVAL. 

Ascapart  or  Ascupart,  in  Drayton's 
Polyolbion,  a  giant  thirty  feet  high 
who  lifted  up  Sir  Bevis,  his  wife 
Josian,  his  sword  Morglay,  and  his 
steed  Arundel  and  carried  all  of  them 
away  under  his  arm.  Sir  Bevis  after- 
wards made  Ascapart  his  slave  to 
run  beside  his  horse: 

Each  man  as  Ascapart  of  strength  to  toss 
For  quoits  both  Temple  Bar  and  Charing 
Cross. 

Ase,  in  Henrik  Ibsen's  drama  Peer 
Gynt  (1867),  the  mother  of  the  titular 
hero.  "  This  poem,"  said  Ibsen, 
''  contains  much  that  has  its  origin 
in  the  circumstances  of  my  own 
youth.  My  own  mother — with  the 
necessary  exaggeration — served  as 
the  model  for  Ase."  Her  death  forms 
a  striking  episode  in  Act  iii. 

Ashburton,  Mary,  heroine  of  Long- 
fellow's romance  of  travel,  Hyperion 
(1839),  a  young  Englishwoman  whom 
Paul  Fleming  meets  when  touring 
Europe  in  order  to  forget  a  domestic 
bereavement  and  with  whom  he  falls 
in  love.  Though  she  esteems  him, 
she  rejects  him,  for  she  does  not  love 
him.  The  above  outlines  fit  the  story 
of  Longfellow's  courtship  of  Miss 
Fanny  Ashburton,  save  that  she  was 
an  American,  from  Boston.  He  met 
her  in  Switzerland  four  years  after 
the  death  of  his  first  wife.  He  was 
thirty-two;  she  was  not  yet  twenty. 
She  refused  him,  and  he  wrote  Hype- 
rion in  the  hope  of  winning  her.  He 
succeeded,  although  at  first  Miss 
Appleton  was  ill-pleased_  at  thus  be- 
coming a  centre  of  public  attention. 
The  marriage  took  place  July  16, 
1843.    In  a  letter  to  Ferdinand  Freli- 


Ashton 


31 


Astrea 


grath,  November  24  of  that  year, 
Longfellow,  after  complaining  of  his 
eyes,  continues,  "  But  nevertheless, 
eyes  or  no  eyes,  engaged  I  was  and 
married  I  am.  I  could  see  cleariy 
enough  for  that — ^married  to  the 
very  Mary  Ashburton,  whose  name 
was  Fanny  Appleton  and  is  Fanny 
Longfellow." 

Ashton,  Colonel  Sholto  Douglas,  in 
Scott's  novel.  The  Bride  of  Lammer- 
moor,  the  elder  brother  of  Lucy. 
Though  he  loves  her,  he  bitterly 
resents  her  engagement  to  the  Master 
of  Ravens  wood,  is  cruel  to  her,  and 
openly  insults  her  betrothed. 

Ashton,  Henry,  Lucy's  younger 
brother,  a  spoiled  boy  who  unwit- 
tingly adds  to  his  sister's  unhappiness. 

Ashton,  Lucy,  the  titular  "  Bride  of 
Lammermoor,"  Sir  William's  daugh- 
ter, gentle,  pliant  and  timid,  easily 
controlled  by  the  will  of  others.  Be- 
trayed into  loving  Ravenswood  by 
the  temporizing  schemes  of  her  father, 
she  is  "  exasperated  to  frenzy  by  a 
long  tract  of  unremitting  persecution 
from  her  mother,"  at  whose  imperious 
will  she  throws  over  her  betrothed  and 
marries  Frank  Hayston,  Laird  of 
Bucklaw.  Then  the  weak  mind  is 
broken  and  the  animal  stands  at  bay 
like  a  wild  cat  and  breaks  the  toils 
that  enmesh  her,  and  Lucy  dies  a 
maiden  in  the  bridal  chamber,  but 
not  before,  in  a  paroxysm  of  insane 
fury,  she  has  stabbed  and  danger- 
ously wounded  the  bridegroom. 

Ashton,  Sir  William,  Lucy's  father. 
A  parvenu  who  has  risen  to  political 
importance  during  the  great  civil 
wars,  he  has  established  his  own  for- 
tunes on  the  ruins  of  the  Ravenswood 
family.  His  temporizing  policy  with 
regard  to  Ravenswood  and  his 
daughter  prepares  the  way  for  the 
tragedy  of  her  marriage  to  another. 

Ashton,  Lady,  wife  of  Sir  William. 
"  In  the  haughtiness  of  a  firmer  char- 
acter, higher  birth,  and  more  de- 
cided views  of  aggrandizement,  the 
lady  looked  with  some  contempt  on 
her  husband,"  but  was  willing  to  join 
in  any  scheme  that  might  advance 
the  family  forttmes.  She  hated 
Ravenswood    and    scrupled    at    no 


means  whereby  she  might  shake  her 
daughter's  faith  in  his  loyalty. 

Aslauga,  in  La  Motte  Fougue's 
romance,  Aslauga's  Knight  (1814),  a 
spirit  chosen  by  the  knight  Froda  in 
preference  to  any  earthly  love.  She 
appears  to  him  in  important  moments 
in  his  career,  and  he  dies  fancying 
himself  clasped  in  her  arms  and 
shrouded  in  her  wonderful  hair. 

Asmodeus,  the  hell-bom  hero  of 
de  Sage's  satirical  romance,  Le 
Viable  Boiteux,  translated  into  Eng- 
lish by  SmoUet  imder  the  title,  The 
Devil  on  Two  Sticks.  He  expressly 
identifies  himself  with  the  Roman 
Cupid  but  is  infinitely  more  cunning 
and  bewildering.  In  one  of  the  best 
known  scenes  of  the  book  Asmodeus 
flies  at  night  with  Don  Cleofas  to  the 
steeple  of  St.  Salvador  and,  waving 
his  hand,  unroofs  all  the  houses  in 
the  city,  laying  bare  their  interiors 
and  exposing  the  various  occupations 
of  the  inhabitants.    See  also  vol.  11. 

Astarte,  in  Byron's  tragedy,  Man- 
fred, a  spirit  in  female  form^  who 
intermittently  visits  the  hero  in  his 
mountain  solitude  and  always  leaves 
him  prostrated  with  grief.  She  is 
vaguely  typical  of  remorse  for  some 
terrible  sin  of  his  past  Ufe  wherein 
she  has  been  an  unwilling  partner, 
but  had  singly  paid  the  penalty. 
Murder?  Incest? — these  seem  at 
least  to  be  the  Byronic  imphcations. 
Lady  Byron,  according  to  Mrs. 
Stowe,  read  into  them  a  confession 
of  his  guilty  relations  with  Mrs. 
Augusta  Leigh. 

We  think  of  Astarte  as  young,  beautiful, 
innocent, — guilty,  lost,  murdered,  pardoned; 
but  still,  in  her  permitted  visit  to  earth, 
speaking  in  a  voice  of  sorrow  and  with  a 
countenance  yet  pale  with  mortal  trouble. 
We  had  but  a  glimpse  of  her  in  her  beauty 
and  innocence,  but  at  last  she  rises  before  us 
in  all  the  mortal  silence  of  a  ghost,  with  fixed, 
glazed  and  passionless  eyes,  revealing  death, 
judgment  and  eternity.— John  Wilson. 

Astrea  (Fr.  Astree),  heroine  of  a 
once  famous  romance,  L' Astree  (two 
volumes,  1609-1619),  by  Honors 
d'Urf^.  The  period  is  the  fourth 
century.  The  scene  is  the  author's 
native  province,  Foreste,  in  France. 
Astrea  is  a  beautiful  shepherdess  in 


Astrophel 


32 


Athalie 


love  with  Celadon,  who  loves  her, 
but  her  jealous  suspicions  are  awak- 
ened by  evil-minded  rivals.  Hence 
a  succession  of  evils.  Celadon,  at- 
tempting suicide,  is  saved  by  the 
Princess  Galatea,  who  carries  him  to 
her  court.  The  maiden's  grief  at  his 
disappearance  worries  her  parents 
into  the  grave.  Astrea,  all  imwitting, 
falls  in  with  Celadon  disguised  as  a 
Druidess,  becomes  his  companion  but 
abandons  him  when  she  discovers  the 
deception.  Again  Celadon  attempts 
suicide — this  time  in  the  Fountain  of 
Truth  which  is  fatal  only  to  liars  and 
hypocrites.  Astrea  accepts  the  test 
when  he  survives,  begs  forgiveness 
for  her  doubts,  and  a  reconciliation 
makes  everybody  happy. 

Astrophel,  the  name  which  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  assumed  for  himself  in 
writing  the  love  sonnets  to  Stella, 
i.e.,  Lady  Penelope  Rich  (see  Stella). 
The  process  by  which  he  evolved  the 
name  is  a  curious  one.  Having 
abridged  Philip  Sidney  to  Phil.  Sid., 
he  anagrammatized  it  into  Philisides. 
Refining  still  further,  he  translated 
Sid.  (the  abridgment  of  Sidus,  Latin 
for  "  Star  ")  into  Astron  (Greek  for 
star),  and  treating  Phil,  as  if  it  were 
abbreviated  from  Philos,  "  loved,"  he 
constructed  for  himself  another  pseu- 
donym, the  poetical  Astrophil,  i.e., 
"  beloved  by  a  star,"  or,  if  you  prefer, 
"  love  star  " — "  star  of  love."  Lady 
Rich  being  the  bright  particular  star 
when  he  worshipped  and  whose  love 
he  craved,  he  designated  her,  in 
conformity  with  his  own  assumed 
name,  Stella.  (See  Atlantic  Monthly, 
November,  1858,  vol.  2,  p.  676.) 
Hence  Philip  Sidney  was  the  lover  or 
the  beloved  of  a  star,  or  both,  while 
Penelope  Rich  was  the  star. 

Astynome.    See  Chriseis. 

Atala,  heroine  of  a  romance,  Atala, 
or  the  Loves  of  Two  Savages  in  the 
Desert  (1801),  by  Francois  R^n6  de 
Chateaubriand.  The  scene  is  laid  in 
North  America.  Atala  is  a  maiden 
of  the  Natchez  tribe,  European  on 
her  father's  side  and  a  Christian. 
She  falls  in  love  with  Chactas,  a 
young  Indian  captive,  liberates  him 
and  flies  with  him  into  the  wilder- 


ness. After  weeks  of  wandering 
through  forest  and  prairie  the  couple 
reach  a  missionary  station.  Atala 
had  been  vowed  to  celibacy  by  her 
mother.  When  she  finds  herself  on 
the  verge  of  yielding  to  passion  she 
poisons  herself  and  dies. 

Atalantis,  The  New,  an  imaginary 
island  described  in  a  romance  by  Mrs. 
de  la  Riviere  Manly,  Secret  Memoirs 
and  Manners  of  Several  Persons  of 
Quality  of  Both  Sexes  from  the  New 
Atlantis,  an  Island  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean (161 7).  The  New  Atalantis 
is  really  England  and  the  book  is  a 
scandalous  chronicle  of  crimes  as- 
cribed to  the  Whig  statesmen  and 
other  public  characters  who  helped 
to  bring  about  the  Revolution  of  i688. 

Ataliba,  in  the  drama  Pizarro,  attri- 
buted to  R.  B.  Sheridan,  the  name 
given  to  the  historical  Atahualpa,  an 
Indian  chief  from  Ecuador  who  in- 
vaded Peru  but  was  defeated  and 
slain  (November  16,  1532)  by  the 
Incas  and  their  ally  Pizarro. 

Atar  Gul,  hero  of  a  romance  of  that 
name  by  Eugene  Sue,  a  negro  domes- 
tic in  one  of  the  French  West  Indies, 
who  has  the  esteem  and  confidence 
of  his  master  and  the  entire  neighbor- 
hood, yet  pursues  for  years  a  deliber- 
ate plan  to  destroy  the  family  he 
serves.  When  his  plans  have  all  suc- 
ceeded he  tortures  the  deathbed  of 
his  master,  a  hopeless  paralytic,  by 
revealing  the  truth,  and  gloating  over 
the  impotent  wrath  and  horror  of 
the  man  who  had  loved  and  trusted 
him.  After  the  master's  death  Atar 
Gul  is  awarded  the  Monthyon  prize 
for  virtue  in  recognition  of  his  sup- 
posed devotion  and  self-sacrifice. 
There  may  be  a  finishing  touch  of 
cynicism  in  the  man's  very  name 
which,  in  Persian,  means  Ottar  of 
Roses  (c/.  Byron): 

She  snatched  the  um  wherein  was  mixed 
The  Persian  Atar-gul's  perfume. 

Bride  of  Abydos,  Canto  i,  x. 

Athalie,  heroine  of  a  tragedy  (1691) 
of  that  name  by  Racine,  founded 
upon  the  Old  Testament  story  of 
Athaliah  (2  Kings  xi;  2  Chronicles 
xxii,  xxiii)  who  dreamed  that  she  was 


1 


Athelstane 


33 


Atossa 


stabbed  by  a  child  robed  in  priestly 
vestment;  she  recognized  its  linea- 
ments in  Joash,  the  only  surviving 
member  of  a  royal  line,  and  thence- 
forth bent  all  her  energies  to  accom- 
plish his  ruin.  He  escaped  through 
the  devotion  of  his  followers  and 
eventually  mounted  the  throne  of  his 
ancestors. 

Athelstane,  thane  of  Coningsburgh, 
in  Scott's  romance,  Ivanhoe,  is  the 
rival  of  the  titular  hero  for  the  affec- 
tions of  Rowena.  She  prefers  Ivan- 
hoe,  but  his  father  and  her  guardian, 
Cedric,  favors  Athelstane,  as  legiti- 
mate heir  to  the  Saxon  monarchy 
which  Cedric  is  plotting  to  restore. 
Athelstane,  though  vain  of  his 
descent,  "  stout  of  heart  and  strong 
of  person,"  is  so  "  slow,  irresolute, 
procrastinating  and  unenterprising" 
that  he  has  earned  the  nickname  of 
"  the  imready."  He  has  no  stomach 
for  plots  that  entail  hurried  journeys 
and  indigestions. 

Athens,  Maid  of,  title  and  subject 
of  a  lyric  by  Lord  Byron.  It  was 
addressed  to  Theresa  Macri,  the 
eldest  of  three  daughters  of  a  Greek 
lady,  Theodora  Macri,  with  whom 
Byron  and  Hobhouse  lodged  during 
the  ten  weeks  they  spent  in  Athens, 
1809-1810.  Byron  wooed  her  in 
Greek  fashion,  giving  ^  himself  a 
wound  across  his  breast  with  a  dagger 
in  order  to  attest  his  sincerity. 
Teresa,  it  has  been  said,  received  the 
attention  as  her  due  and  failed  to  be 
impressed.  On  the  other  hand,  her 
daughter,  Madame  Caroline  Black, 
in  some  letters  recently  discovered  by 
Cambourogen,  librarian  of  the  Athens 
library,  asserts  that  the  "  Maid  "  was 
honestly  uprise,  and  that  until  her 
later  days  she  had  dreams  of  the  poet 
appearing  to  her  to  upbraid  her  for 
giving  herself  in  marriage  to  another. 
Madame  Black  adds  that  Byron 
wrote  to  Teresa  when  he  embarked  at 
Missolonghi  and  that  she  was  on  the 
point  of  making  a  journey  thither  to 
consecrate  her  old-time  adorer  to  the 
cause  of  Greece  when  the  end  came. 
See  DuDU. 

Athos,  in  Alexander  Dumas'  his- 
torical romances,  The  Three  Cuards- 
3 


men,  Twenty  Years  After,  and  The 
Vicomte  de  Bragelonne,  was  one  of 
the  trio  of  guardsmen  with  whom 
d'Artagnan  affiUates  himself  on  his 
arrival  in  Paris.  A  gallant  and  chival- 
ric  figure,  he  bears  with  him  all  the 
languor  and  the  mystery  of  some 
secret  sorrow.  He  hates  women  and 
loves  the  winecup,  yet  is  ever  a  gentle- 
man in  his  conduct  towards  both.  In 
real  Ufe  Athos  was  the  nom  de  guerre 
of  Armand  de  Sillegue,  member  of  an 
ancient  family  which  has  given  many 
a  notable  fighting  man  to  French 
history.  The  real  Athos  was  slain  in 
a  duel. 

Atkins,  Tommy,  a  nickname  for 
the  English  soldier,  which  has  been 
popularized  by  the  London  music 
halls,  and  especially  by  Kipling  in 
his  Barrack-room  Ballads.  One  ex- 
planation states  that  the  name  was 
first  found  in  a  model  roster  issued 
by  the  War  Office  for  the  guidance 
of  company  sergeants  in  making  out 
their  returns,  that  in  a  certain  ran- 
dom set  of  names  the  necessity  of  an 
alphabetical  arrangement  was  exhib- 
ited by  placing  there  Richard  Roe 
and  John  Dow,  soldiers,  in  the  initial 
order  of  surnames.  The  first  of  these 
model  entries  being  "  Atkins, 
Thomas,"  it  was  not  long  before 
Thomas  Atkins  was  picked  to  repre- 
sent the  model  soldier. 

Mr.  Kipling,  in  his  capacity  of  Interpreter, 
and  by  means  of  his  Barrack-room  Ballads, 
made  the  nation  appreciate  and  understand 
its  soldiers  infinitely  better  than  they  had 
ever  done  before.  Indeed,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  by  means  of  this  process 
of  interpretation  he  changed  the  attitude  of 
the  nation.  But  though  many  thousands 
of  people  read  how — 
"It's  Tommy  this  an'  Tommy  that,  an* 

'chuck  him  out,  the  brute;' 
But  it's  'saviour  of  his  country'  when  the 

guns  begin  to  shoot," 
the  change  was  for  the  most  part  wrought 
indirectly.  When  you  let  fly  into  a  whole 
heap  of  balls,  all  are  moved  and  affected, 
though  only  one  or  two  feel  the  impact 
direct.  It  is  enough  if  the  poet  touches 
those  who  can  influence  the  rest. 

Atossa,  in  Pope's  Moral  Essays, 
Epistle  ii,  a  satirical  portrait  some- 
times identified  with  Sarah,  Duchess 
of  Marlborough,  but  more  probably 
meant  for  the  Duchess  of  Bucking- 


Atticus 


34 


Audrey 


ham.  Both  these  ladies  were  great 
friends  of  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Mon- 
tagu, who  in  the  same  poem  figures 
as  Sappho.  The  original  Atossa  of 
classic  fame  was  a  daughter  of  Cyrus 
and  the  queen  successively  of  Cam- 
byses  and  Darius  Hystaspis.  By  the 
latter  she  became  the  mother  of 
Xerxes.  Herodotus  speaks  of  her  as 
a  follower  of  Sappho. 

But  what  are  these  to  great  Atossa 's  mind? 

Scarce  once  herself,  by  turns  all  womankind. 

Pope,  Moral  Essays,  Ep.  ii. 

Atticus,  an  epithet  applied  by  the 
Latins  to  a  person  distinguished  for 
wit,  eloquence  or  learning — from 
Attica,  the  seat  of  Greek  culture. 
Hence  Pope  borrowed  the  name  in  his 
savage  attack  upon  Addison  later  in- 
corporated into  the  Epistle  to  Dr. 
Arbuthnot  (1735).  The  portrait  ends 
with  the  couplet  which  Dr.  Quincey 
has  attacked  as  being  intrinsically 
illogical: 

Who  but  must  laugh  if  such  a  man  there  be? 
Who  would  not  weep  if  Atticus  were  he? 

Hazlitt  considers  the  whole  passage 
to  be  "  the  finest  piece  of  personal 
satire  in  Pope."  Macaulay  praises 
"  the  brilliant  and  energetic  lines 
which  everybody  knows  by  heart  or 
ought  to  know  by  heart"  but  com- 
plains of  their  injustice.  He  concedes 
that  one  charge  is  probably  not  with- 
out foundation: 

Addison  was,  we  are  inclined  to  believe, 
too  fond  of  presiding  over  a  circle  of  humble 
friends.  Of  the  other  imputations  which 
these  famous  lines  are  intended  to  convey, 
scarcely  one  has  ever  been  proved  to  be 
just,  and  some  are  certainly  false.  That 
Addison  was  not  in  the  habit  of  "damning 
with  faint  praise  "  appears  from  innumerable 
passages  in  his  writings,  and  from  none  more 
than  from  those  in  which  he  mentions  Pope. 
And  it  is  not  merely  unjust,  but  ridiculous, 
to  describe  a  man  who  made  the  fortune  of 
almost  every  one  of  his  intimate  friends,  as 
"so  obliging  that  he  ne'er  obliged." 

See  also  Courthope,  Life  of  Pope, 
Chapter  viii. 

Aubert,  Theresa,  heroine  and  title 
of  a  historical  romance  (1819)  by 
Charles  Nodier.  Her  lover  is  a 
sympathizer  with  the  Royalists  dur- 
ing the  French  Revolution.  He  dis- 
guises himself  in  female  attire  and  is 


befriended  by  Therese,  who  for  a 
time  is  ignorant  of  his  sex. 

Auburn,  Sweet,  the  scene  of  Gold- 
smith's poem,  The  Deserted  Village. 
It  is  not  to  be  found  on  the  map. 
There  is  indeed  an  Auburn  in  Wilt- 
shire but  it  is  not  Goldsmith's. 
Macaulay  complains  that  Auburn  is 
an  English  village  in  its  prosperity 
but  an  Irish  in  its  decay,  and  that 
by  thus  confusing  the  rural  life  of  the 
two  countries  the  poet  had  been  so 
untrue  to  fact  as  to  injure  his  poem 
as  a  work  of  art.  Goldsmith  claimed 
to  have  taken  "  all  possible  pains  " 
to  be  certain  of  his  facts,  declaring 
that  his  account  of  the  village's  de- 
cline is  based  upon  personal  observa- 
tion of  conditions  in  England  "  for 
these  four  or  five  years  back."  But 
there  is  no  doubt  that,  perhaps  un- 
consciously, he  drew  upon  his  mem- 
ories of  his  own  native  village  of 
Lissoy,  in  Ireland,  and  wove  them 
into  his  descriptions  of  an  imaginary 
English  town. 

Auchester,  Charles,  in  Elizabeth 
Sara  Sheppard's  novel  of  that  name 
(1853),  a  brilliant  young  Jew  who 
from  earliest  childhood  finds  his 
greatest  delight  in  hearing  and  study- 
ing music  and  pouring  out  his  soul 
in  melody.  When  introduced  he  is  a 
child  in  an  old  English  town  living 
quietly  with  his  mother  and  sister. 
Going  to  the  Cecilia  school  in  Ger- 
many to  carry  on  his  studies  he  falls 
under  the  influence  of  a  musical 
genius,  Seraphael,  who  is  drawn 
from  Mendelssohn,  and  a  great 
singer,  Clara  Bennette,  who  is  prob- 
ably meant  for  Jenny  Lind.  The 
novel  was  originally  published  under 
the  punning  pseudonym  of  E. 
Berger. 

Audley,  Lady,  heroine  of  a  novel, 
Lady  Atidley's  Secret  (1862),  by 
Mary  Elizabeth  Braddon,  a  golden- 
haired  murderess  who  is  driven  to 
crime  in  order  to  protect  her  honor 
and  suffers  agonies  of  repentance  in 
consequence.    See   Floyd,    Aurora. 

Audrey,  a  reduced  form  of  Ethel- 
dritha  or  Etheldrida,  as  in  St.  Audrey, 
from  whose  name  comes  also  the 
word  "  tawdrey,"    In  Shakespeare's 


Augusta 


35 


Auld  Ane 


comedy  As  You  Like  It  this  is  the 
name  of  an  awkward  and  simple- 
minded  country  girl  whom  Touch- 
stone wins  away  from  William.  "  A 
little  thing  but  mine  own  "  is  Touch- 
stone's description  of  her. 

Augusta,  a  title  given  by  the 
Romans  to  London  (Londinium 
Augusta)  and  to  other  cities  in  honor 
of  the  Emperor  Augustus.  London 
is  not  infrequently  thus  referred  to 
by  the  poets  of  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries. 

Close  to  the  walls  which  fair  Augusta  bind. 
Dryden,  MacFlecknoe,  1,  64. 

In  his  opera  Albion  and  Alhinus 
(1685)  Dryden  introduces  Augusta 
upon  the  stage  as  a  personification 
of  London. 

Augusta,  whom  Byron  addresses  in 
Stanzas  to  Augusta  and  Epistle  to 
Augusta  (18 1 6),  is  his  half-sister,  the 
Honorable  Augusta  Byron  (1783- 
1851),  daughter  of  Captain  John 
Byron  by  his  first  wife,  Amelia 
D'Arey,  Baroness  Conyers.  Augusta 
married  (1807)  her  first  cousin, 
Colonel  George  Leigh.  There  are 
numerous  references  to  this  Byron's 
only  sister  scattered  through  Childe 
Harold  and  others  of  his  longer 
poems.  In  fact  she  was  the  good 
genius  of  his  life.  The  sentiment  with 
which  she  inspired  him  was  probably 
the  purest  and  most  ennobling  he 
ever  felt,  despite  the  fact  that  Byron's 
wife,  through  the  medium  of  Mrs. 
Stowe,  and,  more  recently,  Byron's 
grandson,  the  Earl  of  Lovelace,  have 
sought  to  cast  suspicion  on  it.  In 
Cain  and  in  Manfred  these  ill-advised 
relatives  misread  allusions  to  incest 
as  veiled  poetical  confessions  of  actual 
crime. 

Augustina,  the  heroine  of  the  his- 
toric siege  of  Saragossa  as  Joseph 
Palafox  was  its  hero.  That  Spanish 
city  was  invested  (June  15,  1808)  by 
the  French  army  during  the  Pen- 
insular war,  and,  after  extraordinary 
heroism  on  both  sides,  surrendered 
with  all  the  honors  of  war  on  Feb- 
ruary 20,  1809. 

Augustina,  a  mere  girl,  was  a 
peddler  of  cool  drinks  in  the  beleag- 


uered city.  From  beginning  to  the 
end  she  was  ever  in  the  heat  of  the 
conflict,  her  courage  and  resource 
heartening  the  defenders  in  the 
darkest  hours  of  those  bloody  months. 
She  won  the  name  of  La  Artillera 
from  having  snatched  the  match  from 
the  hands  of  a  dying  gunner  and  dis- 
charged the  piece  at  the  besiegers. 
She  died  in  Cuerta,  Spain,  in  1857  at 
a  very  advanced  age.  It  was  Byron 
who  gave  her  the  name  of  the  Maid 
of  Saragossa.  When  he  was  in  Seville 
in  July- August,  1809,  he  used  to  see 
her  as  she  walked  daily  on  the  prado 
wearing  the  medals  and  orders  de- 
creed to  her  by  the  junta.  In  the 
stanzas  dedicated  to  her  in  Childe 
Harold  he  adds  a  touch  of  fanciful 
romance  to  her  story  by  making  the 
slain  gunner  her  lover: 

Ye  who  shall  marvel  when  you  hear  her  tale. 
Oh,  had  you  known  her  in  her  softer  hour, 
Marked  her  black  eye  that  mocks  her  coal- 
black  veil. 
Heard  her  light,  lively  tones  in  lady's  bower. 
Seen  her  long  locks  that  foil  the  painter's 

power, 
Her  fairy  form,  with  more  than  female  grace. 
Scarce  would  you  deem  that   Saragossa's 

tower 
Beheld  her  smile  in  Danger's  Gorgon  face. 
Thin  the  closed  ranks  and  lead  in  Glory's 
fearful  chase. 

Her  lover  sinks — she  sheds  no  ill-timed  tear; 
Her  chief  is  slain — she  fills  his  fatal  post; 
Her    fellows    flee — she    checks    their    base 

career; 
The  foe  retires — she  leads  the  sallying  host; 
Who  can  appease  her  like  a  lover's  ghost? 
Who  can  avenge  so  well  a  leader's  fall? 
What  maid  retrieve  when  man's  flushed  hope 

is  lost? 
Who  hang  so  fiercely  on  the  flying  Gaul? 
Foiled  by  a  woman's  hand,  before  a  battered 

wall?  Catito  u 

Auld  Ane,  a  provincial  name  for 
the  devil  in  Scotland  and  in  northern 
England,  indicating  that  he  can  only 
appear  in  the  shape  of  an  old  man, 
especially  if  taken  in  connection  with 
other  nicknames  for  the  same  per- 
sonage: Auld  Clootie  (probably  an 
allusion  to  his  cloven  feet),  Auld 
Hangie,  Auld  Homie  (from  his  horns), 
Auld  Nick. 

O  thou,  whatever  title  suit  thee, 
Auld  Homie,  Satan,  Nick,  or  Clootie 
Hear  me,  Auld  Hangie,  for  a  wee. 
And  let  poor  damned  bodies  be. 

BUKNS. 


Auld  Reekie 


36 


Avenel 


Auld  Reekie,  a  nickname  for  Edin- 
burgh, an  allusion  either  to  its  smoky 
appearance  as  seen  from  a  distance 
or  the  filth  of  its  streets  revealed  by  a 
nearer  inspection.  It  is  fair  to  add 
that  the  designation  is  ill-desired 
to-day.  But  in  1850  the  London 
Review  complained  that  the  quarter 
of  the  city  to  which  it  was  most 
applicable  "  presents,  even  to  this 
day,  the  spectacle  of  the  most  flagrant 
violation  of  the  most  elementary 
rules  for  the  preservation  of  public 
health  and  the  maintenance  of 
domestic  decency." 

Aunt,  Mr.  F's,  in  Charles  Dickens's 
novel,  Little  Dorritt,  "  an  amazing 
little  old  woman  with  a  face  like  a 
staring  wooden  doll,  too  cheap  for 
expression,   and  a  stiff  yellow  wig, 

Eushed  unevenly  on  the  top  of  her 
ead."  She  was  characterized  by 
extreme  severity  and  grim  taciturnity, 
sometimes  interrupted  by  a  pro- 
pensity to  offer  remarks  in  a  deep, 
warning  voice  traceable  to  no  asso- 
ciation of  ideas."  Among  the  most 
famous  of  these  irrelevant  remarks 
is  the  one  she  flung  at  her  partic- 
ular detestation,  Arthur  Clenman: 
"  There's  milestones  on  the  Dover 
Road."  A  further  remarkable  thing 
about  her  was  that  she  "  had  no 
name  but  Mr.  F's  aunt."  She  was 
sometimes  alluded  to  as  Flora's 
Legacy,  because  Flora  had  inherited 
her  from  her  late  husband. 

Ausonia,  a  poetical  name  for  Italy 
from  the  Ausones  or  Ausonii  who 
were  early  settlers  on  the  western 
coast  of  what  was  later  Campania. 

The  soft  Ausonia's  monumental  reign. 
Campbell,  Gertrude  of  Wyoming,  ii,  25. 

Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table, 

the  hero  of  a  book  of  that  name 
(1857-58)  by  O.  W.  Holmes,  so  called 
because  he  monopolizes  the  conversa- 
tion at  a  Boston  boarding  house.  The 
epigraph  on  the  title  page,  "  Every 
man  his  own  Boswell,"  favors  the 
popular  idea  that  Dr.  Holmes  was 
chronicling  his  own  imaginary  con- 
versations. The  successors,  respec- 
tively, The  Professor  and  The  Poet 
<U  the  Breakfast  Table  (1859  and  1872), 


carry  on  the  same  or  a  very  similar 
personality  under  different  masks, 
though  in  the  latter  book  the  main 
speaker  is  not  "  The  Poet  "  but  "  The 
Master,"  a  title  derived  from  his 
degree  as  Master  of  Arts,  but  also 
appropriate  on  accotmt  of  the  air  of 
authority  with  which  he  lays  down 
the  law. 

Autolycus,  in  Shakespeare's  com- 
edy, The  Winter's  Tale,  a  travel- 
ling pedler,  and  incidentally  a  thief, 
self-described  as  "  a  snapper  up  of 
unconsidered  trifles  "  (Act  iv,  Sc.  3), 
who  feels,  and  half  persuades  his 
hearers,  that  there  is  nothing  criminal 
in  his  rogueries,  for  heaven  is  his 
accomplice: — "  If  I  had  a  mind  to  be 
honest,  I  see  Fortune  would  not  suffer 
me;  she  drops  booties  into  my 
mouth."  Shakespeare  took  the  name 
from  the  master  thief  of  classical  an- 
tiquity, the  son  of  Hermes  (Mercury) 
and  Chione.  Thus  his  rogue  said, 
"My  father  named  me  Autolycus, 
who  was  littered  under  Merciury." 

That,  at  the  close  of  his  dramatic  life, 
after  all  the  trouble  he  had  passed  through, 
Shakespeare  had  yet  the  youngness  of  heart 
to  bubble  out  into  this  merry  rogue,  the 
incarnation  of  fun  and  rascality,  and  let 
him  sail  off  successful  and  unharmed,  is 
wonderful. — F.  J.  Furnival. 

Automathes,  hero  of  one  of  the 
many  imitations  that  followed  in  the 
wake  of  Robinson  Crusoe,  a  philo- 
sophical fiction  (1745)  by  John  Kirby, 
entitled:  The  Capacity  and  Extent 
of  the  Human  Understanding,  ex- 
emplified in  the  extraordinary  case  of 
Automathes^  a  young  nobleman,  who 
was  accidentally  left  in  his  infancy 
upon  a  desolate  island,  and  continued 
nineteen  years  in  that  solitary  state, 
separate  from  all  hufnan  society. 

Automathes,  son  of  a  shipwrecked 
exile  living  alone  from  infancy  on  a 
desert  island,  grows  to  manhood,  a 
self-taught  though  speechless  philoso- 
pher. The  author  was  indebted  not 
only  to  Defoe's  masterpiece  but  also 
to  the  Arabian  romance,  Hai  Eben 
Yokhdan,  which  he  might  have  read 
in  the  Latin  version  of  Pocock. 

Avenel,  Lady  Alice,  in  Scott's 
historical  romance,   The  Monastery, 


Avisa 


widow  of  Walter,  Baron  of  Avenel, 
and  mother  of  Mary,  who  eventually 
marries  Halbert  Glendenning.  Mary 
is  described  as  by  nature  "  mild,  pen- 
sive and  contemplative."  In  The 
Abbot  she  reappears  as  the  Lady  of 
Avenel  who  finds  the  family  castle 
so  gloomy  in  her  husband's  many 
absences  that  she  welcomes  with 
effusion  the  advent  of  her  spirited 
page,  Roland  Graeme. 

Avisa,  the  subject  of  a  series  of 
poems,  Willobie  and  his  Avisa,  or  the 
True  Picture  of  a  Modest  Maid  and 
of  a  Chaste  and  Constant  Wife,  which 
was  first  published  in  1594  and  re- 
printed in  1880  by  Rev.  A.  B.  Grosart. 
She  is  described  as  a  young  woman  of 
lowly  origin,  of  delicate  beauty,  and 
constant  both  as  a  maiden  and  a  wife 
against  the  attacks  of  many  lovers  of 
high  degree.  At  last  came  Henry 
Willobie,  the  reputed  author  of  the 
poems,  who  applied  for  assistance 
"  unto  his  familiar  friend  W.  S.  who 
not  long  before  had  tried  the  courtesy 
of  the  like  passion  and  was  now  newly 
recovered  of  the  like  infection."  The 
context  shows  that  W.  S.  not  only 
was  prominent  as  a  love  poet  but 
that  he  was  connected,  probably  as 
an  actor,  with  the  stage.  Hence  the 
inference  that  W.  S.  was  no  less  a 
person  than  William  Shakespeare. 

At  last  a  perfect  copy  of  the  much- 
discussed  Avisa  has  been  discovered;  at  last 
it  has  been  very  carefully  and  exhaustively 
edited  by  one  of  the  most  learned  of  our 
Elizabethan  critics,  with  the  careful  colla- 
tion of  all  collateral  and  illustrative  litera- 
ture; and  the  result  is  that  some  one,  we 
know  not  who,  being  in  love  with  the  hostess 
of  a  country  tavern,  appealed  to  Shakespeare 
for  assistance  in  prosecuting  his  suit,  and 
that  Shakespeare  teased  and  bantered  him 
in  humorous  malice.  This  is  interesting, 
and  the  record  of  it  is  valuable;  but  it  brings 
us  so  near  to  the  person  of  the  great  poet, 
and  at  the  same  time  reveals  to  us  so  ex- 
tremely little  of  his  nature,  that  we  are 
almost  like  the  boy  in  Mr.  Sala's  novel  who 
was  so  much  hurt  by  the  pennies  which  the 
lady  threw  in  his  face  that  he  forebore  to 
thank  her. — Saturday  Review,  April  3,  1880. 

Axel,  in  Daudet's  Kings  in  Exile 
(1880),  is  a  thinly  disguised  portrait 
of  the  Prince  of  Orange. 

Ayesha,  heroine  of  an  Oriental 
romance,  Ayesha,  the  Maid  of  Kars 


S7 kzo 

(1834),  by  James  Morier.  She  is  the 
reputed  daughter  of  a  rich  old  Turk 
in  Kars.  Lord  Ormond,  a  yoimg 
travelling  EngUshman,  sees  and  falls 
in  love  with  her.  His  efforts  to  gain 
acquaintance  lead  to  his  imprison- 
ment. He  escapes  to  the  stronghold 
of  Cara  Bey,  a  noted  robber.  The 
latter  is  himself  fired  with  imholy 
passion  by  Ormond's  description  of 
Ayesha's  charms.  He  casts  the 
Englishman  into  an  oubliette,  makes 
a  niidnight  foray  ^  upon  Kars  and 
carries  off  the  maiden.  Meanwhile 
Ormond  has  succeeded  in  communi- 
cating with  the  Russian  commander 
on  the  neighboring  frontier.  The 
commander  surprises  the  castle,  cap- 
tures Cara  Bey  and  his  gang,  and 
releases  Ormond  and  Ayesha.  The 
latter  turns  out  to  be  a  daughter  of 
Sir  Edward  Wortley,  is  converted  to 
Christianity,  and  marries  Ormond. 

Aylmer,  Rose,  subject  and  title  of 
an  eight-lined  poem  by  Walter  Savage 
Landor  (1800)  which  seems  destined 
to  outlive  all  his  other  works  in  prose 
or  verse.  Rose  Whitworth  Aylmer 
was  an  English  maiden  whom  Landor 
had  known  in  his  youth  and  who  died 
at  Calcutta  in  her  twentieth  year  on 
March  2,  1800.  In  1909  the  stanzas 
were  engraved  upon  her  tomb  through 
the  intervention  of  Lady  Graves 
Sawle,  whose  mother  was  Rose 
Aylmer's  half-sister. 

Aymer,  prior  of  Jorvaulx  Abbey  in 
Scott's  romance,  Ivanhoe,  "  a  free  and 
jovial  priest  who  loves  the  wine-cup 
and  the  bugle-horn  better  than  bell 
and  book."  It  was  his  denunciation 
of  Rebecca  as  "  a  witch  of  Endor  " 
that  led  the  Grand  Master  to  deal 
with  her  "as  the  Christian  law  and 
our  own  high  office  warrant." 

Azo,  in  Lord  Byron's  narrative 
poem,  Parisina  (18 16),  the  wronged 
husband  of  the  titular  heroine.  He 
wreaks  a  terrible  vengeance  upon  the 
lady  and  her  paramour  (see  Pari- 
sina). Byron  found  the  story  in 
Gibbon's  Antiquities  of  the  House  of 
Brunswick,  where  it  is  told  of 
Nicholas  III,  Marquis  of  Este.  "  The 
name  of  Azo,"  he  says,  "  is  substi- 
tuted for  Nicholas  as  more  metrical." 


B. 


38 


Bacon 


B 


B.  Under  the  title  and  initial  of 
"Mr.  B."  and  under  that  alone  (the 
novel  being  composed  in  a  series  of 
imaginary  letters)  the  reader  is  made 
acquainted  with  the  chief  male  char- 
acter in  Richardson's  Pamela,  or 
Virtue  Rewarded  ( 1 740) .  The  heroine 
is  a  servant  girl  in  his  family  whom 
he  pursues  dishonorably.  She  indig- 
nantly rejects  him  and  leaves  the 
house.  Mr.  B.  follows  her;  passion 
is  transformed  into  love;  he  overlooks 
the  difference  of  station  and  marries 
her.  Fielding  in  his  novel  Joseph 
Andrews  (1742),  originally  begun  as 
a  burlesque  of  Pamela,  suggests  a 
solution  of  the  mysterious  initial  by 
supplying  Mr.  B.  with  a  sister,  Lady 
Booby.  It  may  be  noted  that  in 
some  later  editions  of  Pamela  an 
endeavor  has  been  made  to  neutralize 
this  outrage  by  revealing  "  Mr.  B." 
as  Mr.  Boothby. 

Bab,  Lady,  in  Rev.  J.  Townley's 
farce,  High  Life  below  Stairs  (1763), 
a  maid-servant,  who,  following  the 
custom  of  ^  the  servants'  quarters, 
adopts  and  is  known  by  the  name  of 
her  mistress.  She  is  addressed  as 
"  your  ladyship,"  affects  aristocratic 
airs,  reads  only  one  book  "  which  is 
Shikspur,"  and  anticipates  Mrs. 
Malaprop  by  such  verbal  felicities  as 
"downright  hottenpots  "  applied  be- 
hind their  backs  to  gentlemen  who 
call  upon  her  mistress. 

Baba,  in  Byron's  Don  Juan,  the 
chief  eunuch  at  the  court  of  Sultana 
Guebeyas. 

Babbie,  in  J.  M.  Barrie's  novel, 
The  Little  Minister  (1896),  the  name 
assumed  by  the  wilful  and  winsome 
heroine  when  she  disguises  herself  as 
a  gypsy  woman.  She  wishes  to 
escape  from  her  betrothed.  Lord 
Rintoul,  and  almost  before  she  knows 
it  finds  herself  caught  by  Gavin  Dis- 
hart,  the  exemplary  "  Little  Minis- 
ter "  of  Thrtmis,  who  himself  falls  an 
easy  victim  to  her  briUiant  and  un- 
conventional ways. 

Babley,  Richard,  in  Dickens'  David 
Copperfield,  a  harmless  lunatic  gen- 
erally called  Mr.  Dick.    See  Dice. 


Baboon.  (i.e.,  Bourbon),  Lewis,  in 

Arbuthnot's  poHtical  satire,  The 
History  of  John  Bull  (1712),  a  cari- 
cature of  Louis  XIV  and  hence,  by 
extension,  of  the  French  people,  as 
John  Bull  is  of  the  English.  He  is 
thus  described  by  his  creator: 

Sometimes  you  would  see  this  Lewii 
Baboon  behind  his  counter  selling  broad- 
cloth, sometimes  measuring  linen;  next  day 
he  would  be  dealing  in  mercery  ware;  high 
heads,  ribbons,  gloves,  fans  and  lace  he 
understood  to  a  nicety;  nay,  he  would 
descend  to  the  selling  of  tapes,  garters  and 
shoe-buckles.  When  shop  was  shut  up,  he 
would  go  about  the  neighborhood,  and  earn 
half  a  crown  by  teaching  the  young  men  and 
maidens  to  dance.  By  these  means  he  had 
acquired  immense  riches,  which  he  used  to 
squander  away  at  backsword,  quarter-staff 
and  cudgel  play,  in  which  he  took  great 
pleasure. 

Backbite,  Sir  Benjamin,  in  Sheri- 
dan's comedy,  The  School  for  Scandal 
(1777),  a  jealous,  conceited,  cynical 
and  censorious  gentleman,  a  would-be 
poet  and  wit,  highly  esteemed  as  such 
among  the  foolish  who  consorted 
with  him,  but  publishing  nothing, 
because  as  he  pretended  "  'twas  very 
vulgar  to  print,"  and,  moreover,  he 
found  that  he  could  obtain  a  wider 
circulation  "  by  giving  copies  in  con- 
fidence to  friends."  ( 

Bacon,  Roger  (1214-1292),  a  medi- 
aeval English  monk  and  experimenter 
in  natural  science  who,  like  other 
pioneers  in  the  middle  ages,  was  re- 
puted to  be  a  magician  and  as  such 
has  passed  into  popular  folklore.  His 
feats  were  commemorated  in  a  pam- 
phlet entitled  The  Famous  Historic 
of  Frier  Bacon,  containing  the  wonder- 
ful things  that  he  did  in  his  Life,  also 
the  Manner  of  his  Death,  with  the 
Lives  and  Deaths  of  the  Two  Conjurors, 
Bungye  and  Vandermast,  and  they 
form  the  comic  element  in  Robert 
Greene's  comedy.  Friar  Bacon  and 
Friar  Bungay  (i594)« 

The  play  is  worth  editing;  It  Is  Greene's 
masterpiece,  and  the  masterpiece  of  one  who 
was  an  early  rival  of  Shakespeare  must  be 
interesting.  There  is  an  interest  in  its 
treatment  of  the  story  of  Bacon,  the  great 
student  degraded  by  popular  superstition  to 
the  level  of  a  vulgar  conjurer,  and  raised 
again  by  the  imagination  of  a  poet  to  bo 


Badabec 


39 


Balaustion 


the  friend  of  kings  and  the  prophet  of  great- 
ness for  his  country.  There  is  a  charm, 
moreover,  in  the  genuinely  English  atmos- 

Ehere  which  Greene  contrives  to  throw  over 
is  piece — in  the  Suffolk  meads  and  in  the 
schools  and  streets  of  Oxford,  in  the  English 
Edward  and  the  "fair  maid  of  Pressingfield." 
Saturday  Review. 

Badebec,  in  Rabelais'  comic  ro- 
mance, Pantagruel,  ii,  2  (1533),  the 
wife  of  Gargantua  and  the  mother  of 
Pantagruel,  who  died  in  giving  him 
birth — no  great  marvel  when  it  is 
recorded  that  he  came  into  the  world 
accompanied  by  81  sellers  of  salt, 
each  leading  a  mule  by  a  halter,  9 
dromedaries  laden  with  ham  and 
smoked  tongues;  7  camels,  laden  with 
eels,  and  25  wagons  full  of  leeks, 
garlic,  onions  and  shallots. 

Badger,  Bayham,  in  Dickens's 
novel.  Bleak  House  (1853),  a  physi- 
cian at  Chelsea  under  whom  Richard 
Carstone  pursues  his  medical  studies. 
He  is  described  as  a  pink,  fresh-faced, 
crisp-looking  gentleman  with  a  weak 
voice,  white  teeth,  light  hair  and 
surprised  eyes.  Proud  of  being  Mrs. 
Badger's  "  third,"  he  is  continually 
dragging  in  allusions  to  her  first  and 
second  husbands,  Captain  Swosser 
and  Professor  Dingo. 

Badman,  Mr.,  the  titular  hero  of 
John  Bunyan's  allegorical  tale.  The 
Life  and  Death  of  Mr.  Badman.  As 
Badman  is  the  very  opposite  of 
Christian  in  the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  so 
his  path  leads  to  hell  and  not  to  heaven. 

Bagarag,  Shibli,  in  George  Mere- 
dith's oriental  fantasy.  The  Shaving 
of  Shagpat,  a  whimsical  youth  who, 
after  many  remarkable  adventures, 
becomes  a  barber  and  shaves  Shagpat. 

Bagot,  William,  in  Du  Maurier's 
Trilby.    See  Billee,  Little. 

Bagstock,  Major  Joe,  in  Dickens's 
Dombey  and  Son  (1846),  a  retired 
military  officer,  blue-faced,  red-nosed 
and  apoplectic,  who  cherishes  a  partly 
concealed  passion  for  Miss  Tox  and 
a  consequent  jealousy  of  Mr.  Dom- 
bey. He  is  fond  of  alluding  to  him- 
self by  affectionate  diminutives  and 
nicknames:  "  Old  J.  B.,"  "  Old  Joe," 
"  Rough  and  Tough  Old  Joe,"  etc. 

Bailey,  Tom,  hero  of  the  Story  of  a 
Bad  Boy,  by  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich 


(1869),  which  is  largely  autobiograph- 
ical. Tom  is  only  comparatively  a 
bad  boy  and  his  badness  is  thrown 
into  comic  relief  by  the  puritanic 
austerity  of  the  quaint  New  England 
town  where  he  lived  whose  "  inhabi- 
tants were,  many  of  them,  pure 
Christians  every  day  of  the  seven 
except  the  seventh."  This  town, 
called  -  Rivermouth  in  the  story,  is 
evidently  Portsmouth,  N.  H. 

Baillie,  Gabriel,  in  Scott's  novel, 
Guy  Mannering  (18 15),  the  nephew 
of  Meg  Merrilies,  known  among  the 
gypsies  as  Grabriel  _Paa,  and  among 
his  own  people  in  Liddesdale  as  Tod 
Gabbie  or  Hunter  Gabbie.  Pressed 
into  naval  service  under  Captain 
Pritchard  in  the  Shark,  he  deserted 
in  order  to  warn  Dirk  Hattaraick  of 
the  Shark's  approach.  It  was  he  who, 
under  the  compelling  influence  of  his 
Aunt  Meg,  gave  conclusive  testimony 
as  to  the  identity  of  Vanbeest  Brown 
with  the  missing  heir  of  Mannering. 

Bajazet,  sumamed  The  Thunder- 
bolt (in  Rowe's  tragedy,  Tamerlane, 
1702),  the  Sultan  of  Turkey,  fierce, 
reckless,  indomitable,  who  is  captured 
by  Tamerlane  {q.v.). 

Balaam,  Sir,  in  Pope's  Moral  Es- 
says, iii.  A  "citizen  of  sober  fame" 
and  a  "plain  good  man"  so  long  as 
he  remained  in  obscurity,  he  was 
ruined  by  becoming  wealthy,  a  knight 
and  a  courtier.  Finally,  accepting  a 
bribe  from  France,  he  was  hanged  for 
treason.  The  character  has  never 
been  identified. 

Balafre,  Le  (the  Man  with  a  Scar), 
the  nickname  in  real  life  of  Henry, 
son  of  the  second  Duke  of  Guise, 
whose  face  had  been  slashed  by  a 
sword  at  the  battle  of  Dermans  (i  575) . 
and,  in  Scott's  Quentin  Durward,  that 
of  Ludovic  Lesly. 

Balaustion,  in  Robert  Browning's 
Balaustion's  Adventure  (1871)  and 
Aristophanes'  Apology,  including  a 
Transcript  from  Euripides,  being  the 
Last  Adventure  of  Balaustion  (1875), 
a  pure  invention  of  Browning.  The 
daughter  of  a  Rhodian  father  and  an 
Athenian  mother,  she  casts  in  her  lot 
with  Athens  when,  under  the  disas- 
trous failure  of  the  Sicilian  expedition, 


Balder 


40 


Balthasar 


the  allies  of  that  city  were  deserting 
for  Sparta.  Balaustion  witnesses  the 
disgrace  of  the  former  city  and  the 
triumph  of  the  latter,  makes  friends 
with  Euripides,  and  through  the 
power  of  her  womanhood  extorts  from 
the  ribald  Aristophanes  a  plea  for  his 
art  in  answer  to  a  mute  reproach  of 
Euripides  and  a  direct  charge  from 
herself. 

Balder,  in  Sydney  Dobell's  poetical 
tragedy  of  that  name  (1854),  a  morbid 
young  poet  who  qualifies  himself  for 
what  he  conceives  to  be  his  mission 
in  hfe  by  murdering  his  wife  and 
child  and  putting  into  literary  form 
the  agonies  which  he  and  they  have 
experienced.  W.  E.  Aytoun  has  bur- 
lesqued the  character  in  Firmilian,  a 
Spasmodic  Tragedy. 

Balderstone,  Caleb,  in  Scott's 
novel.  The  Bride  of  Lammermoor,  the 
only  male  servant  who  retained  his 
loyalty  to  the  Ravenswoods  in  their 
misfortunes  and  who  remained  in 
their  employ  without  expectation  of 
reward.  The  queer  shifts  to  which 
he  is  put  to  conceal  the  bareness  of 
the  domestic  larder  and  the  wealth  of 
language  under  which  he  seeks  to 
divert  attention  from  all  appearances 
of  indigence  are  diverting  enough  at 
first  but  eventually  weary  the  reader 
by  multitudinous  repetition.  Never- 
theless he  has  passed  into  literature 
as  the  type  of  the  faithful  servitor — 
a  composite  in  humble  station  of 
Abdiel  and  Munchausen. 

Of  all  our  author's  fools  and  bores,  he  is 
the  most  pertinacious,  the  most  intrusive, 
and,  from  the  nature  of  his  one  monotonous 
note,  the  least  pardonable  in  his  intrusion. 
His  silly  buffoonery  is  always  marring,  with 
gross  absurdities  and  degrading  associations, 
some  scene  of  tenderness  or  dignity.— Senior. 

Balfour,  John,  of  Burley,  or  Kin- 
loch,  in  Scott's  historical  romance, 
Old  Mortality,  a  leader  in  the  Cove- 
nanters'army.  He  occasionally  hides 
his  identity  under  the  nom  de  guerre 
of  Quintin  Mackell  of  Irongray.  Dar- 
ing in  design,  precipitate  and  violent 
in  e-^ecution,  and  going  to  the  very 
extremity  of  the  most  rigid  recusancy, 
he  even  justifies  the  murder  of  Arch- 
bishop Sharpe  in  which  he  took  part. 
"  My  conduct  is  open  to  men  and 


angels,"  he  says  to  Harry  Morton. 
"  The  deed  was  not  done  in  a  corner; 
I  am  here  in  arms  to  avow  it,  and  care 
not  where,  or  by  whom,  I  am  called 
on  to  do  so;  whether  in  the  council, 
the  field  of  battle,  the  place  of  exe- 
cution, or  the  day  of  the  last  great 
trial." 

Balibari,  Chevalier  de,  the  name 
assumed  by  Cornelius  Barry,  uncle  to 
Redmond  Barrie,  the  titular  hero  of 
The  Memoirs  of  Barry  Lyndon,  Esq. 
(1844).  The  Chevalier  is  a  profes- 
sional gambler  and  adventurer,  who, 
under  pretence  of  a  diplomatic  ap- 
pointment, goes  from  one  European 
capital  to  another  running  a  private 
faro  bank  for  callow  youth  and  imbe- 
cile maturity .^  He  makes  Barry  his 
partner  and  his  tool..  Ever  a  devoted 
Roman  Catholic,  the  Chevalier  in  his 
broken  old  age  retires  to  a  convent. 

Baliol,  Mistress  Martha  Bethune, 
of  Baliol  Lodging,  Canongate,  Edin- 
burgh, a  lady  "  of  quality  and  for- 
tune "  who  is  sketched  at  some  length 
in  the  introduction  to  Scott's  romance 
The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth.  At  death 
she  is  represented  as  leaving  to  her 
cousin  Chrystal  Croftangry  the  ma- 
terial for  the  Chronicles  of  the 
Canongate. 

Sir  Walter  notes  that  in  this  lady 
he  "  designed  to  shadow  out  in  its 
leading  points  the  interesting  char- 
acter of  a  dear  friend,"  Mrs.  Murray 
Keith,  who  died  in  1831.  "  The 
author  had,  on  many  occasions,  been 
indebted  to  her  vivid  memory  for  the 
substratum  of  his  Scottish  fictions." 
The  Highland  Widow  is  given  "  very 
much  as  the  excellent  old  lady  used 
tc  tell  the  story." 

Balisardo,  in  Ariosto's  Orlando 
Furioso,  a  sword  owned  by  Ruggiero, 
made  by  Falerina,  a  sorceress,  for  the 
express  purpose  of  slaying  Orlando,  so 
true  and  keen  that  it  would  cut  even 
magic  substances. 

Balnibarbi,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's 
Travels,  a  portion  of ,  the  fabulous 
island  of  Laputa,  inhabited  by  in- 
ventors and  projectors. 

Balthasar  or  Balthazar,  in  Shake- 
speare's plays,  a  frequent  name  for 
a  servant  or  valet.     Thus  Romeo, 


Balthazar 


41 


Barabas 


Portia,  and  also  Don  Pedro  in  Much 
Ado  about  Nothing  have  attendants 
so  called.  Portia  assumes  the  name 
of  Dr.  Balthasar  when  she  appears  in 
court  disguised  as  a  lawyer. 

Balthazar,  in  the  Comedy  of  Errors, 
a  merchant  who  appears  only  in  Act 
iii,  Sc.  I. 

Balue,  John  of,  Cardinal  and 
Bishop  of  Auxerre  (1420-1491),  a 
historical  character  introduced  by 
Scott  in  his  romance,  Quentin  Dur- 
ward.  In  the  fiction  as  in  fact  he  is 
a  trusted  counsellor  of  Louis  XI  of 
France,  a  man  of  obscure  origin  whose 
head  had  been  turned  by  sudden  ele- 
vation to  clerical  rank  and  political 
influence.  His  downfall  came  when 
in  a  moment  of  wounded  vanity  he 
yielded  to  the  advances  of  Crevecoeur 
and  so  worked  upon  the  "  peculiar 
foibles  "  of  his  royal  master  as  to 
induce  him  to  visit  the  Duke  of  Bur- 
gundy in  Peronne.  After  the  disas- 
trous issue  of  that  episode  he  was 
confined  for  eleven  years  in  an  iron 
cage  of  his  own  invention. 

Balwhidder,  Rev.  Micah,  in  John 
Gait's  novel,  Annals  of  the  Parish 
(1821),  a  Presbyterian  minister  pre- 
judiced, narrow  minded  and  conven- 
tional, but  full  of  the  milk  of  htmian 
kindness  and  the  cream  of  Scotch 
piety,  with  just  enough  of  the  acid 
of  humor  to  flavor  but  not  curdle. 

Banister,  in  Shakespeare's  Henry 
VIII,  a  servant  who  had  murdered 
his  master,  Henry,  Duke  of  Bucking- 
ham.   He  appears  only  in  Act  ii,  Sc.  i. 

Bantam,  Angelo.  Cyrus,  Esq.,  M. 
C,  in  Chapter  xxxv  of  the  Pick- 
wick Papers  (1836),  by  Charles 
Dickens,  grand  master  of  the  cere- 
monies at  the  ball  which  Mr.  Pickwick 
attends  at  Bath.  The  original  of  his 
house  has  been  identified  as  No.  12 
Queen  Square,  Bath. 

Bantam,  Lord,  the  eponymic  hero 
of  a  novel  (i 871)  by  Edward  Jenkins, 
attacking  the  domestic  arrangements 
of  the  upper  classes  in  England  and 
the  theories  of  social  and  religious 
reformers  of  a  more  advanced  type 
than  the  author's, 

Baptista,  in  The  Taming  of  the 
Shrewy  a  rich  gentleman  of  Padua, 


the  father  of  Katherine  and  Bianca. 
His  full  name  is  Baptista  Minola. 

Barabas,  titxdar  hero  of  Christo- 
pher Marlowe's  tragedy,  The  Jew  of 
Malta  (1586).  Maddened  by  Chris- 
tian persecutors,  who  treat  him  like  a 
beast,  he  hates  them  like  a  beast.  His 
daughter  has  two  Christian  suitors 
and  by  forged  letters  he  causes  them 
to  slay  each  other.  In  despair  she 
takes  the  veil.  He  poisons  her  and 
the  whole  nunnery,  invents  an  in- 
fernal machine  to  blow  up  the  Turkish 
garrison,  plots  to  cast  the  Turkish 
commander  into  a  well  and  falls  into 
it  himself,  and  finally  is  boiled  alive 
in  a  cauldron  prepared  by  English 
law  for  poisoners,  howling  and  re- 
morseless, regretting  only  that  he  had 
not  done  evil  enough. 

Dyce  opines  that  Shakespeare  was 
probably  acquainted  with  Marlowe's 
tragedy.  "  But,"  he  adds,  "that  he 
caught  from  it  more  than  a  few  trifling 
hints  for  the  Merchant  of  Venice  will 
be  allowed  by  no  one  who  has  care- 
fully compared  the  character  of 
Shylock  with  that  of  Barabas."  On 
the  other  hand  A.  W.  Ward,  while 
admitting  the  marked  difference  be- 
tween the  two  characters,  affirms  that 
the  two  plays  are  written  in  essen- 
tially the  same  spirit.  It  is,  he  thinks, 
the  invention  of  modem  players  and 
commentators  that  Shakespeare  con- 
sciously intended  to  arouse  sympathy 
with  the  Jew;  and  the  fact  of  such 
sympathy  being  aroused  is  due  to  the 
"  unconscious  tact  with  which  the 
poet  humanized  the  character."  In 
both  plays  the  view  is  that  fraud  is 
the  sign  of  the  Jew's  tribe;  and  that 
counter-fraud,  though  accompanied 
with  violence,  on  the  part  of  a  Chris- 
tian is  commendable.  It  seems  an 
inevitable  conclusion  that  in  the 
Merchant  of  Venice  no  pity  was  in- 
tended to  be  felt  for  Shylock;  but 
Barabas,  as  Mr.  Ward  points  out, 
was  meant  to  excite  ridicule  as  well 
as  dislike,  and  the  character,  which 
after  the  beginning  of  the  play  degen- 
erates into  a  caricature,  has  little 
affinity  with  humanity,  while  Shylock 
is  throughout  human  and  real.  See 
Shtlock. 


Barataria 


42 


Barkis 


Barataria,  in  Cervantes'  romance, 
Don  Quixote  (1615),  an  island  city 
over  which  Sancho  Panza  was  ap- 
pointed perpetual  governor.  It  con- 
tained about  1000  inhabitants. 
"  They  gave  him  to  understand  that 
it  was  called  the  island  of  Barataria, 
either  because  Barataria  was  really 
the  name  of  the  place,  or  because  he 
obtained  the  government  of  it  at  so 
cheap  a  rate.  On  his  arrival  near  the 
gates  of  the  town,  the  municipal 
officers  came  out  to  receive  him. 
Presently  after,  with  certain  ridicu- 
lous ceremonies,  they  presented  him 
with  the  keys  of  the  town,  and  con- 
stituted him  perpetual  governor  of 
the  island  of  Barataria."  The  honor 
was  an  empty  one.  Sancho 's  very 
table  was  presided  over  by  Dr.  Pedro 
Rezio  de  Aguero,  who  had  every  dish 
whisked  away  before  he  could  touch 
it,  sometimes  because  it  heated  the 
blood  and  sometimes  because  it 
chilled  it,  but  always  on  some  ridicu- 
lous pretext. 

Bardell,  Mrs.  Martha,  in  Dickens's 
Pickwick  Papers  (1836),  the  relict 
and  sole  executrix  of  a  deceased 
custom-house  officer,  landlady  of 
"  Apartments  for  Single  Gentlemen  " 
in  Goswell  Street,  where  Mr.  Pick- 
wick for  a  period  was  her  star  lodger. 
She  was  a  comely  woman,  of  bustling 
manners  and  agreeable  appearance 
with  "  a  natural  genius  for  cooking, 
improved  by  study  and  long  practice 
into  an  exquisite  talent."  Mr.  Pick- 
wick's will  was  law  in  her  house;  he 
had  little  to  grumble  at  in  his  apart- 
ments, which,  though  on  a  limited 
scale,  were  neat  and  comfortable. 
Unfortunatelv  she  either  misunder- 
stood or  deliberately  plotted  to  mis- 
understand his  intentions,  and  one 
day  was  found  fainting  in  his  arms 
by  his  friends — the  result  of  an  inno- 
cent remark  which  she  had  construed 
as  a  proposal.  Hence  a  breach  of 
promise  case  trumped  up  and  by  the 
unprincipled  lawyers  Dodson  and 
Fogg.  The  trial  occurs  in  Chapter 
xxxiv.  The  character  is  said  to  have 
been  founded  on  a  Mrs.  Ann  Ellis, 
*'  who  kept  an  eating  house  near  Doc- 
tors' Commons." 


Bardolph,  in  both  parts  of  King 
Henry  IV  and  in  The  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor,  is  a  corporal  in  Sir  John 
FalstafiE's  company.  In  Henry  V  he 
has  been  promoted  to  lieutenant. 

Bareacres,  Countess  of,  in  Thack- 
eray's Vanity  Fair,  the  poor  and 
proud  wife  of  George,  Earl  of  Bare- 
acres.  She  snubs  Becky  Sharp  in 
Brussels  just  before  the  battle  of 
Waterloo,  goes  down  to  her  knees  to 
her  to  beg  for  her  horses  to  escape 
from  the  city,  and  later  tries  once 
again  to  snub  Becky  at  Gaunt  House, 
but  this  time  finds  she  has  caught  a 
tartar.  She  had  previously  appeared 
in  Jeames'  Diary  as  "  a  grand  and 
hawfile  pusnage  with  a  Roming  nose." 
Her  husband,  briefly  sketched  in 
Vanity  Fair  as  a  gentleman  with 
"  not  much  pride  and  a  large  appe- 
tite," flits  anachronistically  through 
the  pages  of  that  novel  and  of  Pen- 
dennis  (Chap,  ii)  and  The  Newcomes 
(ix). 

Barker,  Lemuel,  the  chief  character 
in  a  novel.  The  Minister's  Charge 
(1887),  by  W.  D.  HoweUs,  a  self- 
imagined  poet  who  takes  too  seriously 
the  praises  bestowed  upon  his  verses 
by  the  amiably  unveracious  Mr. 
Sewell,  leaves  his  rustic  home  for 
Boston  and  meets  with  many  disap- 
pointments before  he  finds  his  level. 

A  young  New  England  rustic  who  goes  to 
Boston  and  falls  into  temptation,  but  no 
temptation  of  the  grosser  sort  in  which  a 
true  follower  of  the  realists  would  delight  to 
wallow.  The  truth  is  that  Mr.  Howells, 
though  he  professes  to  be  a  realist  and  to 
describe  life  as  it  is,  is  not  one.  He  paints 
the  life  around  him  as  he  chooses  to  see  it. 
He  fits  his  human  beings  for  presentation  in 
the  pages  of  a  family  magazine  and  in  novels 
which  may  be  read  by  every  young  girl.  He 
impresses  us  as  a  sincere  and  pure-minded 
gentleman  who  arranges  his  groups,  care- 
fully chosen,  each  member  with  his  working 
clothes  on,  and  then  photographs  them. — 
Catholic  World. 

Barker,  Peter,  hero  of  a  once  fa- 
mous novel,  The  Bachelor  of  the  Al- 
bany (1874),  by  Marmion  W.  Savage. 
A  thoroughly  humorous  creation. 

Barkis,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield,  the  Yarmouth  carrier,  a 
silent,  shy  man,  who  marries  Clara 
Peggotty,  declaring  his  intentions  by 


Barlass 


43 


Bamardlne 


sending  through  David  the  laconic 
message,  "  Barkis  is  willin'."  He  is 
said  to  have  been  drawn  from  one 
Barker,  whom  Dickens  knew  at 
Blunderston. 

Barlass,  Kate,  a  sobriquet  given 
to  Catherine  Douglas.  When  King 
James  I,  of  Scotland,  was  pursued  by 
conspirators  he  sought  refuge  in  the 
Black  Friars'  monastery  at  Perth. 
To  keep  out  the  murderers  Catherine 
thrust  her  arm  through  the  door- 
staples.  The  door  was  forced,  Cath- 
arine fell  back  with  a  shattered  arm, 
and  the  king  was  murdered  in  the 
sanctuary  where  he  had  taken  refuge. 
In  honor  of  her  deed  Catherine  re- 
ceived the  famous  sobriquet.  Dante 
Gabriel  Rossetti  made  this  episode 
the  subject  of  his  ballad.  The  King's 
Tragedy  (1880).  Catherine  in  her  old 
age  is  supposed  to  tell  the  story. 

Barleycorn,  Sir  John,  a  humorous 
personification  of  'ale  and  all  other 
liquors  made  from  barley.  The  jest 
is  very  old;  it  may  be  foimd  in  a 
fifteenth  century  tract,  The  Arraign- 
ing and  Indicting  of  Sir  John  Barley 
corn,  knt.,  and  in  a  ballad  preserved 
in  The  English  Dancing  Master 
(165 1).  The  poem  has  been  sHghtly 
revamped  by  Bums. 

Barlow,  Billy,  hero  of  an  English 
comic  song  popular  in  the  early 
nineteenth  century.  In  1855  Robert 
Brough  adopted  his  name  as  that  of 
the  pretended  author  of  the  Barlow 
Papers,  writing  on  current  topics  in 
various  forms  of  verse,  but  never 
proceeding  for  long  without  some 
harking  back  to  the  refrain  of  the 
original  song: 

Now  isn't  it  hard  upon  Billy  Barlow. 

O  dear  ragged-y  O, 
Now  isn't  it  hard  upon  Billy  Barlow. 

Barlow,  Mr.,  in  Thomas  Day's 
juvenile  story,  Sandford  and  Merton, 
the  didactic  tutor  of  the  two  boys 
who  never  loses  an  opportunity  for 
advice  or  instruction.  Dickens  has 
an  essay,  "  Mr.  Barlow  "  (  Uncom- 
mercial  Traveller,  xxxii),  in  which  he 
presents  a  parallel  case — an  irrepres- 
sible instructive  monomaniac,  who 
knows  everything  and  knows  that  he 
knows  it. 


Barlow,  Rev.  William,  the  titular 
hero  of  an  opera,  The  Vicar  of  Bray 
( 1 882) ,  by  Grundy  and  Solomon.  Joe 
Barlow  and  his  wife  Alice  are  char- 
acters in  H.  J.  Byron's  comedy,  A 
Hundred  Thousand  Pounds  (1866). 

Barnabas,  Parson,  in  Fielding's 
Joseph  Andrews  (1742),  a  vain  and 
weak  though  not  unworthy  clergy- 
man. Very  dictatorial,  mightily  im- 
pressed with  his  own  dignity  and 
importance,  he  especially  prides  him- 
self on  his  knowledge  of  the  law  and 
on  the  excellence  of  his  sermons: 
"  three  bishops  had  said  that  they 
were  the  best  that  ever  were  written, 
and  were  even  better  than  Tillotson's 
discourses,  though  he  was  a  good 
writer  and  said  things  very  well." 

Bamaby,  Mrs.,  heroine  of  Frances 
Trollope's  novel,  Widow  Barnaby 
(1838),  a  fussy,  good-natured,  vulgar 
woman  whose  chief  aim  in  life  is  to 
marry  again.  This  object  she  accom- 
plishes in  a  sequel.  Widow  Barnaby 
Married  (1840),  and  subsequent  ex- 
periences in  the  United  States  are 
recorded  in  a  third  book.  The  Barn- 
aby s  in  America  (1843),  which  repeats 
the  unfavorable  verdict  on  trans- 
atlantic manners  already  expressed 
in  the  same  author's  Domestic  Man- 
ners of  the  Americans  (1832). 

Barnacle  Family,  in  Dickens's  LitUe 
Dorrit,  "  a  very  high  family  and  a 
very  large  family."  Nine  of  them 
figure  in  the  novel:  Lord  Decimus 
Barnacle,  "  a  cabinet  Minister;  " 
Mr.  Tite  Barnacle,  "  a  permanent 
ofiicial  at  the  circimilocution  office;  " 
Mrs.  Tite  Barnacle,  nee  Stiltstalking; 
Clarence  Barnacle,  a  son  of  Mr.  Tite 
Barnacle,  "  had  a  youthful  aspect, 
and  the  fluffiest  little  whisker  per- 
haps that  ever  was  seen;  "  the  Misses 
Barnacle,  daughters  of  Mr.  Tite 
Barnacle,  "  double  loaded  with  ac- 
complishments and  ready  to  go  off ;  " 
Ferdinand  Barnacle,  private  secretary 
to  Lord  Decimus  Barnacle,  and  Wil- 
liam Barnacle,  member  of  Parliament. 

Bamardlne,  in  Shakespeare's  Meas- 
ure for  Measure,  is  described  in  the 
cast  as  "a  dissolute  prisoner." 
Though  introduced  into  but  two 
short  scenes  in  Acts  iii  and  v  he  makes 


Bamhelm 


44 


Barsisa 


an  ineffaceable  impression.  Hazlitt 
praises  the  character  as  "  one  of  the 
finest  (and  that's  saying  a  bold  word) 
in  all  Shakespeare.  He  is  what  he  is 
by  nature  and  not  by  circumstance 
*  careless,  reckless  and  fearless  of 
past,  present,  and  to  come.'  " 

Bamhelm,  Minna  von,  titular 
heroine  of  a  drama  by  Gotthold 
Ephraim  Lessing  (1767).  She  is  the 
betrothed  of  a  Prussian  officer  in  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  Major  von  Tell- 
heim,  who  being  disgraced  and  de- 
graded on  a  false  charge  of  embezzle- 
ment, renounces  her  hand.  Vainly 
she  vows  unaltered  love.  She  is  an 
heiress,  and  he  will  not  be  beholden 
to  her  generosity.  But  he  learns 
that  for  his  sake  she  has  been  disin- 
herited by  her  wealthy  uncle.  Then 
he  begs  her  to  renew  the  engagement. 
As  she  seems  about  to  yield,  a  letter 
arrives.  TelUieim's  innocence  has 
been  established;  his  rank  and  pay 
restored;  he  is  even  assured  of  speedy 
promotion.  Minna,  assuming  the 
r61e  her  lover  had  dropped,  now  re- 
fuses in  her  poverty  to  take  advantage 
of  his  generosity.  While  Tellheim  is 
still  pleading,  her  uncle  arrives,  and 
it  then  transpires  that  the  story  of 
the  disinheritance  had  been  invented 
by  Minna  in  order  to  win  back  her  lover. 

As  the  first  German  drama  dealing 
with  national  characters  and  con- 
temporary events,  it  exerted  a  wide 
and  salutary  influence  in  Germany. 
It  was  translated  or,  rather,  para- 
phrased into  French  as  Les  Avians 
Getdreux,  and  into  English  (1786), 
by  James  Johnstone  as  the  Disbanded 
Oficer,  and  was  the  parent  of  numer- 
ous soldier  dramas  which  flooded  the 
European  stage  during  the  last  half 
of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Bamwall,  George,  hero  of  a  famous 
English  ballad  of  unknown  author- 
ship and  uncertain  date,  but  probably 
issued  in  the  later  sixteenth  century: 
An  Excellent  Ballad  of  George  Barn- 
tuellf  an  Apprentice  of  London  who 
Thrice  robbed  his  Master  and  Mur- 
dered his  Uncle  in  Ludlow.  Origi- 
nally innocent  and  industrious,  he  falls 
into  the  toils  of  Sarah  Millwood,  a 
courtesan,  who  instigates  him  to  rob 


and  murder,  and  then  threatens  to 
inform  upon  him.  He  flies  beyond 
seas,  writes  a  letter  of  confession  to 
the  Lord  Mayor  of  London  implicat- 
ing Sarah;  she  is  executed,  and  Barn- 
well himself  suffers  capital  punish- 
ment in  Polonia  for  some  fresh  crime. 
His  posthumous  celebrity,  won 
through  the  ballad,  was  very  greatly 
increased  when  George  Lillo  made 
him  the  subject  of  a  tragedy  (1731), 
and  during  the  latter  half  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  he  became  the  hero  of 
songs,  novels  and  pantomimes  which 
deviated  still  further  than  Lillo's 
play  from  the  original  ballad.  Finally 
Thackeray  apotheosized  him  under 
the  more  aristocratic  name  of  George 
de  Barnwell  (q.v.). 

Barnwell,  George  de,  hero  of  a 
burlesque  in  Thackeray's  Novels  by 
Eminent  Hands,  which  originally 
appeared  in  the  London  Punch  as 
Punch's  Prize  Novelists  (1847).  This, 
the  first  in  the  series,  is  facetiously 
attributed  to  "  Sir  E.  L.  B.  L.  Bart." 
and  purports  to  give  three  specimen 
chapters  of  a  romance  whose  scene  is 
laid  in  London  at  "an  indefinite 
period  of  time  between  Queen  Anne 
and  George  II,"  and  in  which  George 
de  Barnwell,  like  Bulwer's  Eugene 
Aram,  murders  his  uncle  from  the 
highest  and  noblest  motives,  the 
desire  to  rid  the  world  of  a  monster 
who  had  no  sympathy  with  the 
Beautiful  and  the  Ideal  and  to  use  his 
wealth  in  reheving  poverty,  in  aiding 
science,  and  in  uplifting  art. 

There  was  a  real  George  Barnwall 
(q.v.),  who  figured  in  the  criminal 
annals  of  England. 

Barry,  Mrs.,  Barry  Lyndon's 
mother  in  Thackeray's  novel  of  Barry 
Lyndon,  an  energetic,  thrifty  and 
handsome  Irish  lady  who  is  proud  of 
her  son's  successful  rascality  and  his 
rich  bride,  though  she  eventually 
resents  his  assumption  of  superiority. 

Barry,  Redmond,  the  real  name  of 
Barry  Lyndon.    See  Lyndon,  Barry. 

Barsisa,  a  Santon  or  Mohammedan 
saint,  whose  story,  as  told  by  Addi- 
son, in  No.  148  of  the  Guardian,  fur- 
nished Lewis  with  the  germ  of  his 
novel,  The  Monk.    Addison  took  the 


Barstowe 


45 


Basile 


story  from  the  Turkish  Tales,  Bar- 
sisa,  after  a  life  of  great  sanctity,  was 
in  his  old  age  tempted  by  the  devil 
to  offer  violence  to  a  beautiful  prin- 
cess who  had  been  confided  to  his 
care.  To  conceal  his  crime  he  was 
driven  to  murder  her,  and  when  the 
murder  was  discovered  he  sold  him- 
self to  Satan  in  a  vain  effort  to  pur- 
chase his  freedom. 

Barstowe,  Captain,  in  Scott's  Pev- 
eril  of  the  Peak,  the  name  assumed  by 
a  Jesuit  named  Fenwicke  who  gives 
Julian  Peveril  a  treasonable  letter 
from  the  Coimtess  of  Derby  to  be 
delivered  in  London.  His  plans  are 
frustrated  by  Fenella. 

Bart,  Lily,  heroine  of  The  House  of 
Mirth  (1906),  a  novel  by  Mrs.  Edith 
Wharton.  A  beautiful,  elegant,  high- 
strung  woman  whom  fate  has  thrown 
into  fashionable  society  in  New  York 
City  without  money  enough  properly 
to  maintain  her  position.  ^  This  is  how 
she  appears  in  Chapter  i  to  the  eyes 
of  Lawrence  Sheldon  who  is  destined 
to  be  her  lover: 

He  had  a  confused  sense  that  she  must 
have  cost  a  great  deal  to  make,  that  a  great 
many  dull  and  ugly  people  must  in  some 
mysterious  way  have  been  sacrificed  to  pro- 
duce her.  He  was  aware  that  the  qualities 
distinguishing  her  from  the  rest  of  her  sex 
were  chiefly  external,  as  though  a  fine  glaze 
of  beauty  and  fastidiousness  had  been  ap- 

Elied  to  vulgar  clay.  Yet  the  analogy  left 
im  unsatisfied,  for  a  coarse  texture  will  not 
take  a  high  finish,  and  was  it  not  possible 
that  the  material  was  fine,  but  that  cir- 
cumstance had  fashioned  it  into  a  futile 
shape? 

Bartholo,  Dr.,  in  Beaumarchais' 
comedies,  Le  Mariage  de  Figaro  and 
Le  Barbier  de  Seville,  a  jealous,  sus- 
picious and  exacting  tutor. 

Barton,  Amos,  principal  male  char- 
acter in  George  Eliot's  story,  The 
Sad  Fortunes  of  the  Rev.  Amos  Barton, 
collected  in  the  volume.  Scenes  of 
Clerical  Life. 

Barton  is  a  poor  country  clergyman 
little  liked  by  his  parish,  always  at 
odds  with  his  vestry,  shabbily  dressed, 
ever  thinking  of  the  little  mouths  at 
home  which  he  finds  it  hard  to  fill  or 
of  his  invalid  wife,  wasting  away  be- 
fore the  bloom  of  youth  is  passed  but 
every  moment  growing  sweeter  in  his 


eyes    as    the    final    parting    draws 
irrevocably  nearer. 

The  sad  fortunes  of  the  Rev.  Amos 
Barton  are  fortunes  which  clever  story- 
tellers with  a  turn  for  pathos,  from  Gold- 
smith downwards,  have  found  of  very  good 
account — the  fortunes  of  a  hapless  clergy- 
man in  daily  contention  with  the  problem 
how  upon  £80  a  year  to  support  a  wife  and 
six  children  in  ecclesiastical  gentility. — 
Leslie  Stephen. 

Barton,  Sir  Andrew,  hero  and  title 
of  a  ballad,  probably  written  in  Queen 
Elizabeth's  reign,  which  versified  the 
story  of  that  famous  Scotch  admiral 
(died  151 1).  Aroused  by  his  depre- 
dations against  English  merchant 
ships,  the  Earl  of  Surrey  sent  his  two 
sons  out  to  sea  to  retaliate,  and  in 
the  engagement  that  followed  (August 
2,  151 1)  Sir  Andrew  was  killed. 

Barton,  Mary,  heroine  of  the  novel 
of  that  name  (1848)  by  Mrs.  E.  C. 
Gaskell,  is  the  daughter  of  a  weaver 
in  Manchester.  When  the  factory 
shuts  down  during  the  troubles  of 
1842  her  mother  and  her  little  brother 
die  from  privation  and  she  is  left 
alone  to  tend  to  her  father.  Embit- 
tered by  reverses  John  Barton  has 
become  a  Chartist  and  is  involved  in 
a  plot  to  assassinate  a  young  mill- 
owner.  ^  Jem  Neilson,  whom  Mary 
loves,  Is  arrested  on  suspicion  and 
Mary  devotes  herself  to  the  task  of 
clearing  Neilson  without  exposing  her 
father. 

Bashville,  in  George  Bernard 
Shaw's  novel,  Cashel  Byron's  Profes- 
sion, a  footman  in  the  service  of  Lydia 
Carew,  an  orphan  heiress  and  a 
beauty  for  whom  he  cherishes  a  dar- 
ing but  unrequited  affection.  R.  L. 
Stevenson  delighted  in  this  character, 
as  may  be  seen  in  a  letter  first  pub- 
lished in  the  preface  to  the  revised 
edition  of  the  novel  (1902)  where  he 
wishes  that  the  author  "  only  knew 
how  I  had  enjoyed  the  chivalry  of 
Bashville — O  Bashville !  j'e»  chortle! 
(which  is  finely  polyglot)." 

Basile,  in  Beaumarchais*  comedies, 
The  Marriage  of  Figaro  (1775)  and  The 
Barber  of  Seville,  a  miser,  a  bigot  and 
a  slanderer.  His  favorite  formula  is 
"  Calumniate,  calumniate;  some  of  it 
will  stick." 


Batsilisco 


46 


Battle 


Basilisco,  in  the  anonymous 
comedy,  Soliman  and  Persida  (1592), 
a  boastful  but  cowardly  knight. 
When  the  newly  knighted  Bastard  in 
King  John  (Act  i,  Sc.  2)  is  called  by 
his  mother  a  "  most  untoward  knave" 
he  humorously  reproves  her 

Knight,  knight,  good  mother,  Basilisco-like, 
What,  I  am  dubbed,  I  have  it  on  my  shoulder. 

Basilius,  in  Sir  Philip  Sidney's 
romance,  The  Arcadia,  the  king  of 
that  imaginary  region. 

Bassanio,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
The  Merchant  of  Venice  (1598),  "  a 
kinsman  and  friend  to  Antonio,"  and 
suitor  to  Portia.  His  success  in 
choosing  the  right  one  among  three 
caskets  wins  him  her  hand.  It  was 
for  Bassanio  that  Antonio  entered 
into  his  strange  compact  with  Shylock 
(g.r.).  One  of  the  most  colorless  of 
all  Shakespeare's  characters,  he  seems 
hardly  deserving  of  Antonio's  affec- 
tion or  Portia's  love. 

Bassett,  Octavia,  heroine  of  A  Fair 
Barbarian  (188 1),  a  novel  by  Mrs. 
Frances  Hodgson  Burnett.  A  nine- 
teen-year-old girl  from  Nevada,  she 
comes  to  visit  her  aunt.  Miss  Rhoda 
Bassett,  in  the  English  village  of 
Slowbridge.  Her  innocent  abandon 
outrages  the  chill  proprieties  of  the 
elder  ladies,  raises  secret  jealousies 
among  the  younger  ones  and  excites 
open  admiration  from  the  bucks  and 
beaux  who  flock  around  her,  half 
ashamed  of  their  own  devotion. 

Bastard  of  Orleans  (Fr.  B4tard 
d'Orl^ans).  A  nickname  given  to 
Jeane  Dunois  (1403-1468),  a  natural 
son  of  Louis,  Duke  of  Orleans,  the 
brother  of  King  Charles  VI.  He 
fought  against  the  English  by  the 
side  of  Joan  of  Arc  and  contributed 
largely  to  their  expulsion  from  France 
after  the  death  of  that  heroine.  He 
figures  in  Shakespeare's  I  Henry  VI, 
in  Mark  Twain's,  and  generally  in  all 
novels  and  plays  concerning  Joan  of 
Arc  (q.v.). 

Bates,  Charley,  generally  called 
Master  Bates  in  Oliver  Twist  (1837), 
by  Charles  Dickens,  one  of  Fagin's 
pupils  in  the  art  of  pocket  picking. 
His  dexterity  is  almost  equal  to  that 


of  the  Artful  Dodger.  See  Dawkins, 
John. 

Bates,  Miss,  in  Jane  Austen's 
novel,  Emma  (181 5),  a  worthy  old 
maid,  happy  in  eking  out  a  narrow 
income  and  caring  for  a  faiUng 
mother.  Though  conceded  to  be  the 
village  bore,  "  a  great  talker  on  little 
matters,  full  of  trivial  communica- 
tions and  harmless  gossip,"  she  was 
yet  universally  popular  from  her 
effusive  goodness  of  heart.  "  She 
was  a  happy  woman  and  a  woman  no 
one  named  without  good-will.  It 
was  her  own  contented  temper  that 
worked  such  wonders.  She  loved 
everybody,  was  interested  in  every- 
body's happiness."  Goldwin  Smith 
opines  that  "  the  hand  which  drew 
Miss  Bates,  though  it  could  not  have 
drawn  Lady  Macbeth,  could  have 
drawn  Dame  Quickly,  or  the  nurse 
in  Romeo  and  Juliet.'' 

Bath,  Major,  in  Henry  Fielding's 
novel,  Amelia  (1751),  a  vain  but 
kindly  and  high-minded  gentleman, 
fellow  prisoner  with  Captain  Booth 
who  strives  to  conceal  his  poverty 
under  a  lofty  bearing  and  magnilo- 
quent speech.  George  Colman  the 
younger  has  imitated  this  character 
in  Lieutenant  Worthington,  hero  of 
his  comedy,  The  Poor  Gentleman 
(1802). 

Bathsheba,  in  the  Old  Testament, 
was  the  wife  of  Uriah.  David  had 
the  husband  treacherously  put  out  of 
the  way  in  order  to  enjoy  the  em- 
braces of  his  wife.  Bathsheba  became 
the  mother  of  Solomon.  In  Dryden's 
satirical  poem,  Absalom  and  Achito- 
phel,  the  name  Bathsheba  is  given  to 
Louise  de  Keroual,  the  French  mis- 
tress of  Charles  II,  whom  he  bestowed 
in  marriage  on  one  of  his  minions, 
making  him  Duke  of  Portsmouth. 

Battle,  Ben,  a  "  soldier  bold  "  in 
Thomas  Hood's  punning  ballad, 
Faithless  Nelly  Gray,  who  is  forsaken 
by  his  eponymic  love  after  he  has  lost 
all  his  limbs  in  the  service  of  his 
country. 

Battle,  Sarah,  in  Charles  Lamb's 
Mrs.  Battle  on  Whist,  one  of  the 
Essays  of  Elia,  was  in  real  life  Sarah 
Bumey,    nSe    Payne,    the    wife    of 


Bayes 


47 


Bazaroff 


Madame  D'Arblay's  brother  and  the 
mother  of  Lamb's  great  friend,  Martin 
Bumey.  All  Mrs.  Battle  required, 
it  will  be  remembered,  was  "  a  clear 
fire,  a  clean  hearth,  and  the  rigor  of 
the  game." 

Bayes,  the  chief  character  in  The 
Rehearsal  (167 1),  a  burlesque  by 
George  Villiers,  Duke  of  Bucking- 
ham, intended  to  ridicule  the  extrav- 
agance of  the  "  heroic  "  plays  during 
the  Restoration.  The  founder  of  this 
school.  Sir  William  Davenant,  was 
living  when  the  piece  was  begun.  He 
was  poet  laureate,  Le.,  wearer  of  the 
bays,  whence  Bayes.  The  play  was 
so  long  in  hand  that  Davenant  died 
(1668)  before  it  was  produced;  Dry- 
den  succeeded  him  as  laureate  and 
the  character  of  Bayes  was  passed 
on  to  him.  Some  of  Davenant's 
characteristics,  e.g.,  his  broken  nose, 
were  retained,  but  the  "  hum  and 
buzz,"  the  rhodomontade  were  even 
more  applicable  to  Dryden  than  to 
Davenant,  and  the  profuse  quotations 
from  Dryden's  plays  emphasized  the 
likeness.  Dryden  retaliated  by  mak- 
ing Buckingham  the  Zimri  {q.v.)  of 
Absalom  and  Achitophel.  Bayes  is 
represented  as  the  author  of  a  mock 
tragedy  under  rehearsal,  and  takes 
both  himself  and  his  play  in  a  gro- 
tesquely serious  spirit.  He  is  vain, 
foolish  and  irritable,  obsequious  to 
the  great  and  tyrannous  to  his 
subordinates. 

Sheridan  recast  The  Rehearsal  into 
The  Critic,  or  a  Tragedy  Rehearsed 
(1779),  and  remodelled  Bayes  into 
Sir  Fretful  Plagiary  {q.v.). 

Bayham,  Frederick,  in  Thackeray's 
novel.  The  Newcomes,  appearing  in- 
cidentally also  in  The  Adventures  of 
Philip,  Chapter  x,  a  good-natured, 
rollicking,  magniloquent  Bohemian 
attached  to  the  staff  of  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette.  He  alludes  to  himself  famil- 
iarly as  F.  B.  and  is  known  to  most 
of  his  friends  by  those  initials.  The 
character  is  said  to  have  been  drawn 
from  one  of  Thackeray's  Bohemian 
acquaintances,  William  Proctor,  who 
among  other  points  of  resemblance 
always  spoke  of  himself  in  the  third 
person  as  William. 


Baynes,  Charlotte,  in  Thackeray's 
novel,  The  Adventures  of  Philip,  the 
loyal,  faithful  and  devoted  girl  with 
whom  PhiUp  Firmin  is  in  love  and 
whom  he  marries  despite  all  opposi- 
tion from  her  family.  She  is  intro- 
duced in  Chapter  xvi  with  the 
following  description:  "  A  tall  young 
lady  in  a  brown  silk  dress  and  rich 
curling  ringlets  falling  upon  her  fair 
young  neck — beautiful  brown  curling 
ringlets,  vous  comprenez,  not  wisps  of 
moistened  hair,  and  a  broad  clear 
forehead,  and  two  honest  eyes  shining 
below  it,  and  cheeks  not  pale  as  they 
were  yesterday;  and  lips  redder  still. 
Indeed,  never  was  a  pleasanter  pic- 
ture of  health  and  good-humor." 

Baynes,  General  Charles,  in  Thack- 
eray's novel  Philip,  father  to  Char- 
lotte, a  brave  man  in  action,  but 
timorous  and  weak  in  common  life, 
especially  in  presence  of  his  wife,  who 
rules  him  with  vigor  and  acrimony. 

Bazan,  Don  Csesar  de,  hero  and 
title  of  a  French  drama  (July, 
1844)  by  Dumanoir  and  D'Ennery 
which  has  been  freely  imitated, 
adapted  or  burlesqued  by  English 
playwrights.  The  first  English  ver- 
sion by  k  Beckett  and  Mark  Lemon 
(October,  1844)  retained  the  French 
title  and  followed  the  original  more 
closely  than  its  half-dozen  successors. 
This  is  the  version  prepared  for  Lester 
Wallack  in  London  and  reproduced  by 
him  in  New  York  in  1849.  Fechter's 
version  dates  from  1861.  John 
Brougham  brought  out  the  first 
burlesque,  Don  CcBsar  de  Bassoon^ 
in  1845. 

Bazaroff,  in  Tourgenief's  novel, 
Fathers  and  Sons,  a  young  student  of 
advanced  opinions  despising  the 
gentler  graces  exemplified  in  the 
young  nobleman  KirsanoflF.  His 
views  clash  not  only  with  the  world 
at  large  but  also  with  his  own^  circle 
and  there  is  a  deep  pathos  in  the 
confused  efforts  of  his  father  to 
understand  the  son's  new  ideas  and 
the  young  man's  vain  attempts  to 
convert  the  father. 

Bazaroff  dies,  not  on  the  scaffold 
as  his  early  career  might  seem  to 
foreshadow,  but  of  blood  poisoning 


Beatrice 


48 


Beb6c 


contracted  while  dissecting  a  corpse. 
Having  given  up  his  wild  dreams  and 
conquered  his  fierce  passions  he  has 
returned,  resolved  to  practise  medi- 
cine and  play  the  part  of  a  useful 
citizen.  Just  when  one  might  hope 
all  from  so  strong  a  character  he  dies 
a  victim  to  blind  chance. 

Beatrice,  heroine  of  Shakespeare's 
comedy,  Much  Ado  about  Nothing 
(1600).  Niece  to  Leonato,  governor 
of  Messina,  she  and  Benedick  (q.v.) 
clash  at  their  first  meeting  but  fall 
in  love  as  the  result  of  a  stratagem 
ingeniously  contrived  by  their  friends. 

The  extraordinary  success  of  this  play  in 
Shakespeare's  own  day,  and  ever  since,  in 
England,  is  to  be  ascribed  more  particularly 
to  the  parts  of  Benedick  and  Beatrice,  two 
humorsome  beings,  who  incessantly  attack 
each  other  with  all  the  resources  of  raillery. 
Avowed  rebels  to  love,  they  are  both  en- 
tangled in  its  net  by  a  merry  plot  of  their 
friends  to  make  them  believe  that  each  is 
the  object  of  the  secret  passion  of  the  other. 
— ScHLEGEL,  Trans. 

In  Beatrice,  high  intellect  and  high  ani- 
mal spirits  meet,  and  excite  each  other  like 
fire  and  air.  In  her  wit  (which  is  brilliant 
without  being  imaginative)  there  is  a  touch 
of  insolence,  not  infrequent  in  women  when 
the  wit  predominates  over  reflection  and 
imagination.  In  her  temper,  too,  there  is  a 
slight  infusion  of  the  termagant;  and  her 
satirical  humor  plays  with  such  an  unre- 
spective  levity  over  all  subjects  alike  that  it 
required  a  profound  knowledge  of  women  to 
bring  such  a  character  within  the  pale  of  our 
sympathy.  But  Beatrice,  though  wilful,  is 
not  wayward;  she  is  volatile,  not  unfeeling. 
She  has  not  only  an  exuberance  of  wit  and 
gayety,  but  of  heart,  and  soul,  and  energy  of 
spirit. — Mrs.  Jameson. 

Beaucaire,  Monsieur,  hero  and 
title  of  a  historical  romance  (1900) 
by  Booth  Tarkington,  a  pretended 
French  barber  at  Bath  during  the 
Beau  Nash  regime  who  falls  in  love 
with  an  aristocratic  Englishwoman. 
He  eventually  turns  out  to  be  Louis 
Philippe  de  Valois,  cousin  of  Louis 
Philippe  of  France,  who  had  escaped  to 
England  to  avoid  a  projected  marriage 
with  the  Princessede  Bourbon-Conti. 

Beauchamp,  Nevil,  titular  hero  of 
George  Meredith's  novel,  Beau- 
champ's  Career,  a  gallant  English 
naval  officer  of  high  birth  who,  after 
serving  in  the  Crimea  and  elsewhere, 
comes  home  a  radical  reformer.  He 
falls    under    the    influence    of    Dr. 


Shrapnel,  a  kindly  man  hated  and 
feared  as  a  revolutionist  by  Whig  and 
Tory  respectabiUties.  Beauchamp 
runs  for  Parliament  but  is  beaten  by 
the  corrupt  constituency  of  Beve- 
sham  (probably  Southampton)  and 
takes  to  lecturing  and  writing  for 
the  people.  He  marries  Jennie  Den- 
ham  after  courting  two  other  women 
and  is  eventually  drowned  in  rescuing 
a  boy.  His  political  career  was  in  part 
suggested  by  that  of  Admiral  Maxse, 
to  whom  in  1862  Meredith  **  affection- 
ately inscribed  "a  volume  of  poems. 

Beaujeu,  Monsieur  de,  in  Scott's 
novel.  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel,  owner 
of  an  ordinary  to  which  Lord  Dal- 
garno  introduced  Nigel — "  the  well- 
known  and  general  referee  in  all 
matters  affecting  the  mysteries  of 
Passage,  Hazard,  In  and  In,  Pen- 
neeck,  and  Verquire,  and  what  not. 
Why,  Beaujeu  is  King  of  the  Card- 
pack,  and  Duke  of  the  Dice-box!  " 

Beaumanoir,  Sir  Lucas  de,  in 
Scott's  historical  romance,  Ivanhoe, 
the  Grand  Master  of  the  Templars,  a 
bigoted  ascetic  who  loyally  devotes 
himself  to  the  purification  of  his 
order  but  is  unscrupulous  as  to  means. 
He  is  especially  vindictive  towards 
Rebecca  whom  he  looks  upon  as  a 
Delilah,  a  "  foul  witch  who  hath 
flung  her  enchantments  over  a 
brother  of  the  Holy  Temple,"  i.e., 
Bois  Guilbert. 

Beaumelle,  in  Massinger  and 
Field's  Fatal  Dowry  (1632),  the 
betrothed  of  Charalois  (q.v.),  who 
detects  her  in  an  intrigue  with  Novall 
and  slays  both.  In  1703  Rowe  made 
the  FakU  Dowry  the  basis  of  his  Fair 
Penitent  and  changed  the  heroine's 
name  to  Calista  {q.v.). 

When  Beaumelle  falls  a  victim  to  the 
seductions  of  a  contemptible  fribble  her 
guilt  remains  so  wholly  without  excuse  or 
"motive"  as  to  find  no  atonement,  in  a 
dramatic  sense,  even  in  her  repentance  and 
death. — A.  W.  WARD,  English  Dramatic 
Literature,  ivji,? 

Bebec,  heroine  of  a  novel.  Two 
Little  Wooden  Shoes  (1874),  by  Ouida; 
an  innocent  little  girl  of  Brabant 
petted  by  a  rich  painter  who  leaves 
her  to  her  peasant  lover.     Hearing 


Bede 


49 


Belford 


that  he  has  fallen  ill,  she  walks  to 
Paris  to  offer  him  loving  succor,  but 
finds  him  sunk  in  debauchery,  flies 
home  and  dies. 

Bede,  Adam,  the  titular  hero  of 
George  Eliot's  novel,  Adam  Bede,  a 
village  carpenter  of  strenuous  life  and 
high  ideals,  who  was  closely  patterned 
after  the  author's  father.  We  are 
told  that  an  old  friend  of  Robert 
Evans  had  the  story  read  to  him,  and 
sat  up  for  hours  to  listen  to  descrip- 
tions which  he  recognized,  exclaiming 
at  intervals,  "  That's  Robert;  that's 
Robert  to  the  life!" 

She  loves  to  paint  persons  whose  lot  in 
life  is  insignificant,  but  whose  spirit  is  high. 
Nowhere  has  she  accomplished  this  with  so 
much  effect  as  in  Adam  Bede.  Adam  is  the 
complete  realisation  of  Carlyle's  peasant- 
saint — perhaps  we  ought  to  say  artisan- 
saint.  In  other  respects  also  the  concep- 
tion bears  the  mark  of  Carlyle,  notably  in 
the  dignity  with  which  honest  work  is 
clothed.  A  bishop  once  said  that  probably 
Adam  Bede  was  the  nearest  portraiture  of 
what  the  human  life  of  Christ  in  Nazareth 
was  like  that  is  possible  to  human  art — and 
it  would  be  difficult  to  offer  a  higher  com- 
pliment to  George  Eliot's  genius. — Sir 
Leslie  Stephen. 

My  chief  complaint  with  Adam  Bede, 
himself,  is  that  he  is  too  good.  He  is  meant, 
I  conceive,  to  be  every  inch  a  man;  but,  to 
my  mind,  there  are  several  inches  wanting. 
He  lacks  spontaneity  and  sensibility;  he  is 
too  stiff  backed.  He  lacks  that  supreme 
quality  without  which  a  man  can  never  be 
interesting  to  men — the  capacity  to  be 
tempted. — Henry  James,  Views  and  Re- 
views, p.  20. 

Beefington,  Milor,  in  Canning's 
burlesque,  The  Rovers,  or  the  Double 
Arrangement,  first  published  in  the 
Anti-Jacobin.  An  English  nobleman 
exiled  by  John  before  the  signing  of 
Magna  Charta,  he  reads  all  about 
the  episode  in  the  daily  paper  when 
he  arrives  in  Paris. 

Beetle,  in  Rudyard  Kipling's  Stalky 
and  Co.,  a  supposed  portrait  of  the 
author  in  his  schooldays.  See 
Stalky,  Your  Uncle. 

Belarius,  in  The  Tragedy  of  Cymbe- 
line  (1605),  a  nobleman  and  soldier 
in  the  army  of  Cymbeline,  King  of 
Britain,  who  being  suspected  of 
treacherous  dealings  with  the  Romans 
is  banished  and  lives  twenty  years  in 
a  cave  in  the  wilds  of  Wales.    Mean- 


while he  has  stolen  the  king's  infant 
sons,  Guiderius  and  Arviragus,  and 
brought  them  up  to  manhood  in 
ignorance  of  their  origin,  and  away 
from  all  their  kind.  Cymbeline  is  van- 
quished and  captured  in  a  battle  be- 
tween Romans  and  Britons.  Belarius 
comes  to  his  rescue,  releases  the  king, 
but  he  himself  falls  into  captivity. 

Belch,  Sir  Toby,  in  Shakespeare's 
comedy.  Twelfth  Night  (1614),  uncle 
of  Olivia,  the  wealthy  Coimtess  of 
Illyria,  and  a  dependent  on  her 
bounty.  He  is  an  old-fashioned 
roysterer  whose  drunken  and  boister- 
ous wit  appealed  to  Shakespeare's 
audience  and  still  possesses  a  historic 
interest  as  showing  what  our  an- 
cestors considered  humor.  Even 
Hazlitt  says,  "  We  have  a  friendship 
for  Sir  Toby."  One  noteworthy 
phrase  is  credited  to  him:  "Dost 
thou  think,  because  thou  art  virtuous, 
there  shall  be  no  more  cakes  and  ale  ?  " 

Bel  Demonio  (It.  The  Beautiful 
Demon),  in  John  Broughman's  drama 
of  that  name  (1863),  the  name  as- 
sumed by  Angelo  when  he  puts  him- 
self at  the  head  of  a  band  of  Zingari 
to  enforce  his  claim  upon  the  hand  of 
Lena.  He  is  thought  to  be  a  plebeian 
but  he  turns  out  to  be  of  noble  birth, 
and  he  wins  his  bride  after  gallant 
and  desperate  struggles.  The  play 
is  founded  upon  L'Abbaye  de  Castro. 

Belford,  Young,  titular  hero  of  The 
Squire  of  Alsatia  (1688),  a  comedy  by 
Thomas  Shadwell  which  borrows 
some  of  its  incidents  from  the  Adelphi 
of  Terence  and  the  Truculentus  of 
Plautus,  but  is  mainly  founded  on 
the  traditions  of  the  Whitefriars 
sanctuary  in  London  known  popu- 
larly as  Alsatia  (q.v.).  Belford,  en- 
ticed into  the  clutches  of  the  rascally 
denizens,  makes  common  cause  with 
them  under  the  nickname  of  "  The 
Squire  of  Alsatia  "  against  his  own 
father,  Sir  William  Belford,  and  other 
would-be  rescuers;  beats  back  the 
officers  of  the  law  summoned  by  Sir 
William,  and  even  takes  him  a 
prisoner.  In  the  end  Sir  William  is 
rescued  by  a  younger  son  and  the 
"  squire  "  is  borne  away  from  Alsatia, 
repents,  and  is  forgiven. 


Belinda 


50 


Bellair 


Belinda,  heroine  of  Pope's  mock- 
heroic  poem,  The  Rape  of  the  Lock 
(17 1 2),  which  De  Quincey  calls  "  the 
most  exquisite  monument  of  playful 
fancy  that  universal  literature  af- 
fords." In  real  life  her  name  was 
Arabella  Fermor.  She  was  the  lady 
to  whom  Pope  had  already  addressed 
the  famous  lines: 
If  to  her  share  some  female  errors  fall, 
Look  on  her  face  and  you'll  forget  them  all. 

Pope  dedicates  the  poem  to  Mis- 
tress Fermor,  having  written  it  in 
the  hope  of  patching  up  a  quarrel 
between  her  and  Lord  Petre  that  had 
broken  the  friendship  between  them 
and  threatened  to  disrupt  two  fam- 
ilies. His  lordship,  in  a  freak  of 
gallantry,  had  abused  a  lover's  privi- 
lege by  cutting  off  a  lock  of  her  hair. 
She  resented  this  liberty.  Pope 
undertakes  to  answer  the  questions 
thus  put  in  the  introduction: 

•'Say,  what  strange  motive.  Goddess,  could 

compel 

A  well  bred  lord  to  assault  a  gentle  belle? 

O  say  what  stranger  cause,  yet  unexplored. 

Could  make  a  gentle  belle  reject  a  lord?" 

and  he  embellishes  the  story  with 
invocations,  apostrophes,  the  inter- 
vention of  supernatural  beings  and 
the  rest  of  the  epic  mechanism.  See 
Berenice. 

Belinda  Harvey.  See  Harvey, 
Belinda. 

Beline,  in  Moli^re's  comedy,  Le 
Malade  Imaginaire,  the  second  wife 
of  Argan,  the  treacherous  and  self- 
seeking  stepmother  of  his  children, 
who  abets  and  encourages  his  follies 
in  the  hope  that  his  death  may  leave 
her  free  to  despoil  his  estate. 

Belisarius,  the  greatest  of  Justin- 
ian's generals  (obit.  565),  is  the  hero 
of  Marmontel's  historical  romance, 
Belisaire,  which  utilizes  some  famous 
traditions  now  discredited.  Accord- 
ing to  authentic  history  Belisarius, 
after  overthrowing  the  Vandal  king- 
dom in  Africa  and  the  Gothic  king- 
dom in  Italy,  was  in  563  accused  of  a 
conspiracy  against  the  life  of  Jus- 
tinian. He  was  imprisoned  for  a 
year  in  his  own  palace  and  then  re- 
stored to  favor.  Marmontel  follows 
the  pathetic  legend  that  he  was  dis- 


graced, blinded,  and  reduced  to  beg 
for  a  living  in  the  streets  of  Constanti- 
nople, with  a  label  around  his  head 
Date  obolus  Belisarii  ("  Give  an 
obolus  to  Belisarius"). 

Bell,  Bessy,  in  Allan  Ramsay's 
ballad  of  Bessie  Bell  and  Mary  Gray, 
the  daughter  of  a  country  gentleman 
near  Perth  who,  when  the  plague 
broke  out  in  1666,  retired  with  her 
friend  Mary  Gray  to  a  romantic  spot 
called  Bum  Braes.  Here  their  needs 
were  supplied  by  a  young  man  who 
was  in  love  with  both  of  them.  Un- 
fortunately he  caught  the  infection, 
communicated  it  to  the  ladies,  and 
all  three  died. 

Bell,  Helen  Laura,  generally  known 
as  Laura,  the  heroine  of  Pendennis, 
who  eventually  marries  Arthur,  her 
cousin.  As  Mrs.  Arthur  Pendennis 
she  also  appears  incidentally  in  The 
Newcomes  and  Philip.  She  is  modest, 
amiable  and  nobly  generous,  coming 
to  the  aid  of  Helen  Pendennis  with 
her  own  money  when  Arthur  has 
been  extravagant.  Brought  up  with 
Arthur  and  more  or  less  attached  to 
him  from  infancy,  her  love  for  the 
heroic  is  momentarily  captured  by 
Warrington  and  might  have  grown 
into  a  strong  passion  had  he  not 
checked  it  by  the  story  of  his  un- 
fortunate secret  marriage. 

Pendennis,  so  the  story  goes,  was  based 
upon  a  true  anecdote  of  Brighton  life,  told 
to  Thackeray  by  the  Misses  Smith  (daugh- 
ters of  Horace,  part  author  of  Rejected 
Addresses)  when  he  told  them  he  had  to 
produce  the  first  number  of  a  novel  in  a 
few  days  and  had  no  idea  how  to  start  one. 
In  gratitude  he  christened  his  heroine  Laura 
after  a  younger  sister,  Mrs.  Round.  When 
Pendennis  was  finished  the  original  Laura 
was  very  angry,  or  at  least  pretended  to  be 
very  angry.  "I'll  never  speak  to  you  again, 
Mr.  Thackeray,"  she  declared;  "you  know 
I  meant  to  marry  Bluebeard"  (Lady  Rock- 
minster's  name  for  George  Warrington).  It 
may  perhaps  be  remarked  that  it  is  rather 
curious  that  Thackeray  should  have  chris- 
tened his  heroine  Laura  Bell,  for  that  was 
the  name  of  a  demi-mondaine  of  the  day, 
so  notorious  that  it  is  inconceivable  that 
such  a  man  about  town  as  the  author  should 
not  have  heard  of  her. — Lewis  Melvillb, 
Thackeray's  Originals  in  Some  Aspects  0/ 
Thackeray  (191 1). 

Bellair,  in  Etherege's  comedy  of 
The  Man  of  Mode  (1676),  is  supposed 
to  be  a  bit  of  self -portraiture. 


Bellair 


51 


Belphoebe 


Bellair,  Count,  a  French  officer  held 
prisoner  at  Lichfield,  in  Farquhar's 
comedy  of  The  Beaux  Stratagem 
(1707). 

Bellario,  in  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  Philaster,  the  name  as- 
sumed by  Euphrasia  (q.v.)  when  she 
disguises  herself  as  a  page. 

Bellario,  Doctor,  in  Shakespeare's 
Merchant  of  Venice,  a  learned  lawyer 
cousin  to  Portia  who,  when  she  dis- 
guises herself  to  plead  in  court,  gives 
her  a  letter  to  the  Doge  that  aids  her 
in  her  stratagem.  He  never  appears 
on  the  scene. 

Bellaston,  Lady,  in  Fielding's  novel, 
Tom  Jones  (1750),  a  profligate  woman 
of  wealth  and  fashion  from  whom 
Tom  Jones  accepts  a  degrading 
maintenance  during  an  impecunious 
period  of  youth. 

Suppose  we  were  to  describe  the  doings  of 
such  a  person  as  Mr.  Lovelace,  or  my  Lady 
Bellaston  .  .  .  ?  How  the  pure  and 
outraged  Nineteenth  Century  would  blush, 
scream,  run  out  of  the  room,  call  away  the 
young  ladies,  and  order  Mr.  Mudie  never 
to  send  one  of  that  odious  author's  books 
again  1 — Thackeray,  English  Humorists. 

Belle  Dame  sans  Mercy,  La,  hero- 
ine of  a  poem  of  that  name,  once 
supposed  to  be  a  translation  by 
Chaucer  of  a  dialogue,  by  Alain 
Chartier,  "  between  a  gentleman  and 
a  gentlewoman,  who  finding  no  mercy 
at  her  hand  dieth  for  sorrow."  A 
ballad  by  John  Keats,  La  Belle  Dame 
sans  Merci  (18 19),  evidently  takes 
its  title  from  the  earlier  poem,  but 
it  invests  the  cruel  lady  with  a  hint 
of  mystic  and  magic  qualities  quite 
foreign  from  the  original  and  more 
in  keeping  with  Spenser's  Phaedria 
{Faerie  Queene,  ii,  6.3,  14.7). 

Bellefontaine,  Benedict,  in  Long- 
fellow's poem,  Evangeline  (1849), 
a  wealthy  farmer  of  Grandpr^, 
the  father  of  Evangeline.  When  his 
fellow  Acadians  were  driven  into 
exile  by  the  British,  Benedict  died  of 
a  broken  heart  as  he  was  about  to 
embark  and  was  buried  on  the  sea- 
shore. 

Bellenden,  Edith,  heroine  of  Scott's 
historical  romance,  Old  Mortality. 
The   granddaughter   of   Lady   Mar- 


garet, she  is  engaged  to  Lord  Evan- 
dale,  though  in  love  with  Henry 
Morton.  When  Henry  was  in  danger 
she  saved  his  life  through  the  influ- 
ence of  Evandale,  whom  she  subse- 
quently married.  On  the  death  of 
Evandale,  she  married  Morton. 

Bellenden,  Lady  Margaret,  in 
Scott's  Old  Mortality,  an  old  Tory 
lady,  "  life-rentrix  of  the  barony  of 
Tillietudlem,"  uncompromisingly  de- 
voted to  the  Jacobite  cause.  During 
the  great  civil  wars  under  Charles  I 
she  had  lost  her  husband  and  two 
sons  but  felt  that  she  had  received 
her  reward  after  the  Restoration,  for 
Charles  II  "  had  actually  breakfasted 
at  the  Tower  of  Tillietudlem;  an 
incident  which  formed  from  that 
moment  an  important  era  in  the  life 
of  Lady  Margaret."  She  is  con- 
stantly dragging  in  references  to  this 
story  to  the  boredom  of  her  friends 
and,  it  must  be  confessed,  to  the 
eventual  weariness  of  the  reader. 

Bellonia  Sandra,  in  George  Me- 
redith's novel  of  that  name  (1864) 
and  its  sequel  Vittoria  (1866),  a  noble 
Italian  lady,  an  incarnate  genius, 
surrounded  by  commonplace  senti- 
mentalists and  formalists.  In  the 
sequel  she  breaks  away  from  her  cir- 
cle, and  her  public  career  as  Vitto- 
ria, the  great  singer,  takes  us  to  the 
revolutionary  Italy  of  1848. 

Belphcebe,  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene,  a  huntress  divinely  fair  and 
most  divinely  chaste,  who  is  a  sort 
of  complement  to  Gloriana  (g.r.)  in 
the  same  poem — being  intended  as  a 
likeness  of  Queen  EHzabeth,  the 
woman,  as  Gloriana  represents  the 
sovereign  in  her  royal  state. 

Flattery  more  highly  seasoned  may  have 
been  offered  her  [Queen  Elizabeth],  but 
none  more  delicate  and  graceful  than  that 
contained  in  the  finished  portrait  of  Bel- 
phoebe. She  represents  that  pure  and  high- 
spirited  maidenhood  which  the  ancients 
embodied  in  Diana;  and,  like  her,  the  forest 
is  her  dwelling-place,  and  the  chase  her 
favorite  pastime.  The  breezes  have  im- 
parted to  her  their  own  fleetness,  and  the 
swaying  foliage  its  graceful  movement. 
.  .  .  She  is  passionless  and  pure,  self- 
sustained  and  self  dependent,  "m  maiden 
meditation  fancy  free,"  and  shines  with  a 
cold  lunar  light,  and  not  the  warm  glow  of 
day.    The  author  has  mingled  the  elements 


Belsize 


52 


Benedick 


of  her  nature  so  skillfully  that  the  result  is 
nothing  harsh,  unnatural,  or  unfeminine; 
and  has  so  combined  the  lofty  and  the  ideal 
with  the  graceful  and  attractive,  that  we 
behold  in  her  a  creature     .     .     . 

"Too  fair  for  worship,  too  divine  for  love" 
Geo.  S.  Hillard. 

Belsize,    the   Honorable    Charles, 

familiarly  known  as  Jack,  and  later 
rising  to  the  peerage,  as  Lord  High- 
gate,  one  of  Lord  Kew's  gay  set  in 
Thackeray's  novel.  The  Newcomes. 
He  and  Lady  Clara  PuUen  had  been 
in  love  from  early  youth,  but  poverty 
separated  them.  She  became  the 
unhappy  wife  of  Sir  Barnes  Newcome 
and  eloped  with  "  Jack  "  when  he 
succeeded  to  his  father's  titles  and 
property. 

Belted  Will,  a  nickname  bestowed 
upon  Lord  William  Howard  (1563- 
1640),  warden  of  the  western  marches. 

His  Bilboa  blade,  by  Marchmen  felt, 
Hung  in  a  broad  and  studded  belt; 
Hence  in  rude  phrase  the  Borderers  still 
Called  noble  Howard  "Belted  Will." 

Sir  W.  Scott. 

Belvawney,  hero  of  W.  S.  Gilbert's 
comedy,  Engaged  (1877),  an  amorous 
young  gentleman  who  has  connected 
himself  with  matrimonial  intentions, 
express  or  implied,  to  three  women. 

Belvawney,  Miss,  in  Charles  Dick- 
ens's Nicholas  Nickleby  (Chap,  xlviii), 
a  member  of  Mr.  Crummles's  theatri- 
cal company  who  seldom  aspired  to 
speaking  parts,  but  usually  went  on 
as  a  page  in  white  silk  hose  to  stand 
with  one  leg  bent  and  contemplate 
the  audience. 

Belvidera,  the  heroine  of  Thomas 
Otway's  tragedy,  Venice  Preserved 
(1682),  daughter  of  Priuli,  a  senator, 
and  wife  of  Jaffier  (g.w.). 

Like  Shakespeare  he  had  conceived  gen- 
uine women — Monimia,  above  all  Belvidera, 
who,  like  Imogen,  has  given  herself  wholly, 
and  is  lost  in  an  abyss  of  adoration  for  him 
she  has  chosen,  who  can  but  love,  obey, 
weep,  suflFer,  and  who  dies  like  a  flower 
plucked  from  the  stalk,  when  her  arms  are 
torn  from  the  neck  around  which  she  has 
locked  them. — Taine,  English  Literature, 
vol.  II,  bk.  iii. 

The  great  attraction  is  in  the  character 
of  Belvidera  and  when  that  part  is  repre- 
sented by  such  as  we  remember  to  have  seen, 


no  tragedy  is  honored  by  such  a  tribute  not 
of  tears  alone,  but  of  more  agony  than  many 
would  seek  to  endure. — Henry  Hallam. 
Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe, 
1837-39. 

Bendish,  George,  hero  of  Maurice 
Hewlett's  novel,  Bendish,  a  Study  in 
Prodigality  (19 13),  is  obviously  pat- 
terned after  Lord  Byron. 

Bendish,  the  protagonist  of  the  book,  is  a 
poet,  a  sentimentalist,  a  man  of  clear  cut, 
statuesque  features,  rejoicing  in  the  "marble 
pallor"  which  is  said  to  appeal  to  certain 
romantic  souls  as  the  finest  type  of  mascu- 
line beauty.  Moreover,  his  baptismal  name 
is  George,  he  belongs  to  the  English  aristoc- 
racy, and  he  lived  in  the  early  part  of  the 
last  century.  All  this  seems  to  point  to  one 
inevitable  conclusion;  but,  alas!  Bendish 
was  not  lame — and  so,  perhaps,  Mr.  Hewlett 
does  not  intend  him  as  a  study  of  Lord 
Byron  any  more  than  he  intends  his  Gervase 
Poore  as  a  full  length  portrait  of  the  poet 
Shelley.— iV.  F.  Times. 

Benedick,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy. 
Much  Ado  about  Nothing  (1600),  a 
young  lord  of  Padua  who  as  wit, 
soldier  and  scholar  achieves  the  fully 
rounded  combination  whereof  Biron 
in  Love's  Labor's  Lost  was  a  prophecy. 
One  may  imagine  that  here  was 
Shakespeare's  conception  of  himself 
at  maturity,  as  Biron  adumbrated 
him  in  his  salad  days.  The  name 
Benedick  has  passed  into  colloquial 
use  as  a  synonym  for  a  married  man. 
He  who  began  as  a  railer  against 
women  and  a  bachelor  by  unassail- 
able conviction  proves  recreant  to 
his  professions  and  in  Act  v,  Sc.  4,  is 
thus  greeted  by  Don  Pedro,  "  How 
dost  thou.  Benedick,  the  married 
man?  " 

The  chief  force  of  Shakespeare  in  the  play 
comes  out  in  the  characters  of  Benedick 
and  Beatrice.  They  have  not  a  touch  of 
misanthropy,  nor  of  sentimentality,  but  are 
thoroughly  healthy  and  hearty  human  crea- 
tures; at  first  a  little  too  mudi  self  pleased, 
but  framed  by  and  by  to  be  entirely  pleased 
with  one  another  .  .  .  The  trick  which 
is  played  upon  the  lovers  to  bring  them  to- 
gether is  one  of  those  frauds  practised  upon 
self-love  which  appear  in  several  of  the 
comedies  of  this  period.  But  neither  is  an 
egotist  except  in  a  superficial  way.  Beatrice 
is  filled  with  generous  indignation  against 
the  wrongers  of  her  cousin,  and  she  inspires 
Benedick  to  become  (not  without  a  touch 
of  humorous  self  consciousness)  champion 
of  the  cause. — E.  Dowden,  Shakespeare 
Primer. 


Bennett 


63 


Berger 


Bennett,  Elizabeth,  heroine  of  Jane 
Austen's  novel,  Pride  and  Prejudice 
(1813),  a  bright,  witty,  fresh,  original 
and  amiable  giri,  considerate  of 
others  but  quite  capable  of  asserting 
herself  when  occasion  demands.  She 
was  a  deserved  favorite  with  her 
creator.  "  I  must  confess  that  I 
think  her  as  delightful  a  creature  as 
ever  appeared  in  print,"  says  Miss 
Austen  in  a  letter  to  a  friend.  Mr. 
George  Saintsbury  frankly  avowed 
that  he  would  like  to  have  married 
her. 

Bennett,  Lydia,  in  Pride  and 
Prejudice,  the  youngest  of  the  Ben- 
nett sisters,  a  spoiled  child,  a  silly 
flirt,  pretty  but  wilful,  who  makes  a 
disreputable  elopement  with  a  young 
officer  named  Wickham.  Darcy  pur- 
sues the  couple  and  reinstates  them 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world. 

Bennett,  Mr.,  in  Jane  Austen's 
novel,  Pride  and  Prejudice  (18 13),  an 
amiable,  peace-loving  and  mildly 
cynical  English  gentleman,  thor- 
oughly in  sympathy  with  his  second 
daughter  Elizabeth,  but  openly  bored 
by  his  four  other  girls;  and  though 
equally  out  of  harmony  with  their 
mother — a  querulous,  ambitious, 
narrow-minded,  matchmaking  ma- 
tron— ever  yielding  with  humorous 
acquiescence  to  her  domineering 
disposition. 

Bennett,  Mrs.,  in  Pride  and  Preju- 
dice, the  most  determined  of  match- 
making mammas  with  a  fatal  readi- 
ness to  discuss  the  affairs  of  her  family 
with  anybody  who  will  listen  to  her. 

Benson,  in  George  Meredith's 
novel,  The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel, 
a  butler  at  Raynham  Abbey,  the  seat 
of  Richard's  father.  He  shares  his 
master's  mistrust  for  women  and  is 
beaten  by  Richard  Feverel  for  spying 
on  him  and  Lucy  Desborough. 

Benvoiio,  in  Romeo  and  Juliet 
(1598),  a  quarrelsome  member  of 
the  Montague  family,  deeply  attached 
to  his  cousin  Romeo.  "  Thou!  "  says 
Mercutio,  another  cousin,  "  why 
thou  wilt  quarrel  with  a  man  that 
hath  a  hair  more,  or  a  hair  less,  in 
his  beard  than  thou  hast:  thou  wilt 
quarrel  with  a  man  for  cracking  nuts, 


having  no  other  reason  but  because 
thou  hast  hazel  eyes  "  (Act  iii,  Sc.  i). 

Beppo,  hero  and  title  of  a  narrative 
poem  (18 18)  by  Lord  Byron.  Taken 
prisoner  by  the  Turks,  he  turns 
Mussulman,  but  finally  escapes,  re- 
turns to  his  home  in  Venice;  at  a 
masked  ball  finds  his  wife  Laura 
flirting  with  a  strange  cavalier  but 
forgives  her  and  takes  her  back. 
Beppo  (more  properly  Beppe)  is 
diminutive  for  Giuseppe  (Joseph) 
and  so  might  be  translated  Joe. 
Pope  Pius  X,  who  by  birth  and  bap- 
tism was  Giuseppe  Sarto,  was  affec- 
tionately known  to  his  own  family  as 
Beppe,  even  when  he  had  reached  the 
papacy.  The  sources  of  Byron's 
poem  were  a  Venetian  scandal  "  in 
high  life  "  of  recent  occurrence. 

Berengaria  of  Navarre,  queen 
consort  of  Richard  Coeur-de-Lion,  is 
introduced  by  Scott  into  his  histori- 
cal romance.  The  Talisman.  He  de- 
scribes her  as  a  beautiful  and  fasci- 
nating woman  who  "  affected,  or  at 
least  practised  a  little  childish  petu- 
lance and  wilfulness  of  manner  "  and 
was  only  too  fond  of  "idle  frolics 
that  ill  comported  with  royal  dignity 
and  sometimes  brought  her  into 
serious  difficulty."  See  Kenneth  of 
Scotland. 

Berenger,  Eveline,  heroine  of 
Scott's  historical  romance.  The  Be- 
trothed, who  is  engaged  to  Sir  Hugo 
de  Lacy  but  is  in  love  with  his 
nephew.  Sir  Damian  de  Lucy.  Never- 
theless, when  Sir  Hugo  is  absent  in 
the  Crusades  she  faithfully  kept  her 
troth  with  him  until  his  return,  when 
he  relinquished  her  to  his  nephew.  ^ 

Berger,  E.,  a  pseudonym  of  Eliza 
Sheppard  used  in  her  first  published 
novel,  Charles  Auchester  (1853). 

That  name  of  hers  is  not  the  most  attrac- 
tive in  the  tongue,  but  all  must  love  it  who 
love  her;  for,  if  any  theory  of  transmission 
be  true,  does  she  not  owe  something  of  her 
own  oneness  with  Nature,  of  her  intimacy 
with  its  depths,  of  her  love  of  fields  and 
flowers  and  skies,  to  that  ancestry  who  won 
the  name  as,  Uke  the  princely  Hebrew  boy, 
they  tended  the  flocks  upon  the  hills,  under 
sunlight  and  starlight  and  in  every  wind 
that  blew?  Never  was  there  a  more  char- 
acteristic device  than  this  signature  of 
"E.  Berger;"  and  nobody  learned  anything 
by  'W.—Atlantic  Monthly. 


BorgCTftc 


54 


Bertram 


BergeraC)  Cyrano  de,  French  poet 
and  dramatist,  contemporary  of 
Molidre,  who  is  said  to  have  plagiar- 
ized from  him  a  famous  scene  in  The 
Rogueries  of  Scapin. 

He  is  the  hereof  Edmond  Rostand's 
play  named  after  him  (1897).  The 
size  of  his  nose  is  exaggerated  for 
dramatic  purposes,  and  he  is  repre- 
sented as  being  extremely  sensitive  to 
any  mocking  allusion.  Hence  he  is 
involved  in  street  fights  in  which  he 
performs  wonders  of  strength  and 
skill.  Desperately  in  love  with  his 
kinswoman,  Roxane,  a  beautiful  pre- 
cieuse,  he  yet  aids  Christian  de  Neu- 
villette,  a  handsome  but  rather  dull 
gallant,  to  win  her  hand  by  writing 
his  love  letters  for  him  and  prompting 
him  with  pretty  phrases  when  Chris- 
tian plays  Romeo  to  her  JuUet  on  a 
dark  night.  He  arranges  a  stolen 
marriage  between  the  pair  and,  after 
Christian's  death  on  the  field  of 
battle,  continues  to  be  the  platonic 
friend  of  the  widow  until  his  own 
imminent  death  unseals  his  lips. 

Berinthia,  in  Vanbrugh's  Relapse 
(1697),  and  Sheridan's  modernized 
and  condensed  version  of  the  same 
comedy -4  Trip  to  Scarborough  (i777)t 
is  a  brilliant  and  coquettish  young 
widow  in  love  with  Colonel  Townly 
but  flirting  desperately  with  Loveless 
as  he  in  turn  flirts  with  Amanda, 
Berinthia's  cousin,  and  wife  of  Love- 
less, each  in  order  to  play  upon  the 
other's  jealousy. 

Berkeley,  Old  Woman  of,  heroine 
of  Southey's  ballad  of  that  name 
versified  from  Olaus  Magnus.  A 
wicked  old  woman,  she  sends  on  her 
deathbed  for  her  son,  the  monk,  and 
her  daughter,  the  nun,  and  asks  that 
they  shall  place  her  when  dead  in  a 
great  stone  coffin  fastened  to  the 
ground  with  strong  iron  bands.  Fifty 
priests  and  fifty  choristers  shall  pray 
and  sing  over  her  for  three  days  while 
the  bell  tolled  unceasingly.  The  first 
night  passed  with  little  disturbance; 
on  the  second  the  lights  burned  blue 
and  yells  were  heard  outside  the 
church;  on  the  third  the  devil  in 
person  broke  into  the  church  and 
carried  off  the  body  on  his  black  horse. 


Berlichingen,  Goetz  von,  or  Gott- 
fried of  the  Iron  Hand,  a  historical 
character  (1480- 1562)  whom  Goethe 
has  made  the  titular  hero  of  an  his- 
torical drama. 

Goetz,  a  German  burgrave,  took  a 
prominent  part  in  the  wars  for  civic 
independence  against  the  electors  of 
Brandenberg  and  Bavaria,  losing  his 
right  hand  at  the  siege  of  Landshut 
(i505)'.  The  iron  hand  which  re- 
placed it  (his  own  invention)  is  still  ex- 
hibited in  Jaxthausen,  his  birthplace. 

Bernardo,  in  Hamlet,  an  oflScer  on 
guard  with  Marcellus  at  Elsinore. 
They  are  the  first  mortals  to  whom 
the  Ghost  makes  his  appearance. 
They  report  to  Horatio. 

Bernstein,  Baroness,  in  Thack- 
eray's novel  of  The  Virginians,  the 
Beatrix  Esmond  (g.f.)  of  Henry 
Esmond,  now  grown  old,  retaining 
little  of  her  former  beauty  but  still 
brilliant,  lively  and  loquacious,  the 
possessor  of  a  tongue  that  can  be 
amusing  or  venomous  as  she  chooses. 
She  has  passed  through  many  notori- 
ous adventures  and  has  survived  two 
husbands.  Bishop  Tusher  and  the 
Baron  de  Bernstein. 

Berry,  Mrs.  The  old  nurse  of 
Richard  Feverel  in  George  Meredith's 
novel  of  that  name  who  later  befriends 
Lucy  Desborough  when  she  has  be- 
come Richard's  wife. 

Bertram,  Coimt  of  Rousouillon,  the 
unworthy  hero  of  Shakespeare's  com- 
edy, Airs  Well  That  Ends  Well:  the 
recalcitrant  husband  of  Helena,  who 
lures  him  back  to  her  by  stratagem. 

I  cannot  reconcile  my  heart  to  Bertram; 
a  man  noble  without  generosity,  and  young 
without  truth;  who  married  Helen  as  a 
coward,  and  leaves  her  as  a  profligate;  when 
she  is  dead  by  his  unkindness,  sneaks  home 
to  a  second  marriage,  is  accused  by  a  woman 
he  has  wronged,  defends  himself  by  false- 
hood and  is  dismissed  to  happiness. — > 
Samuel  Johnson,  General  Observations  on 
Shakespeare's  Plays  (1768). 

Johnson  expresses  a  cordial  aversion  for 
Count  Bertram,  and  regrets  he  should  have 
been  allowed  to  come  off  at  last  with  no 
other  punishment  than  a  temporary  shame, 
nay,  even  be  rewarded  with  the  unmerited 
possession  of  a  virtuous  wife.  But  does  not 
the  poet  point  out  the  true  way  of  the  world, 
which  never  makes  much  of  man's  injustice 
to  woman.  If  so-called  family  honour  it 
preserved.— A.  W.  Schlbgel. 


Bertram 


55 


Beverley 


Bertram,  Edmmid,  hero  of  Jane 
Austen's  novel,  Mansfield  Park 
(1814),  and  the  most  agreeable  of  all 
her  clerical  types.  He  is  cultivated, 
right-minded,  kindly,  but  not  over 
brilliant.  Miss  Austen  herself  ac- 
knowledged that  he  was  very  far 
from  being  what  she  knew  an  English 
gentleman  often  was.  He  devotes 
half  a  dozen  years  to  drawing  the 
timid  Fanny  Price  out  of  her  shell, 
directs  her  taste  in  reading,  interests 
himself  in  her  pursuits,  makes  her  by 
degrees  a  lovable  and  charming  com- 
panion and  (after  following  for  a 
period  the  false  lights  held  out  by 
Mary  Cranford)  ends  by  marrying  her. 

Bertram,  Harry,  hero  of  Walter 
Scott's  romance,  Guy  Mannering,  son 
of  Godfrey  Bertram  and  legitimate 
heir  to  EUangowan.  Kidnapped  in 
his  infancy  he  is  brought  up  under 
the  name  of  Vanbeest  Brown  (q.v.). 
Meg  Merrilies  is  the  first  person  to 
recognize  him  and  he  is  eventually 
restored  to  his  own  and  enabled  to 
marry  Julia  Mannering,  daughter  of 
Colonel  Guy  Mannering,  under  whom 
he  has  served  in  India.  Julia  de- 
scribed him  in  these  words: 

His  good-humour,  lively  conversation, 
and  open  gallantry  suit  my  plan  of  life,  as 
well  as  his  athletic  form,  handsome  features, 
and  high  spirit,  would  accord  with  a  char- 
acter of  chivalry. 

These  qualities  are  but  inade- 
quately brought  out  in  the  narrative 
and,  like  most  of  Scott's  heroes,  he 
can  only  be  accepted  on  trust.  See 
Waverly,  Edward. 

Bertrand,  the  cowardly  and  imbe- 
cile accomplice  of  Robert  Macaire  in 
some  of  the  plays  and  burlesques 
founded  on  that  clever  scoundrel's 
adventures,  though  in  the  original 
production  of  L  Auberge  des  Adrets 
he  is  known  as  Jacques  Strop. 

Bertuccio,  in  Tom  Taylor's  The 
Fool's  Revenge  (1859),  an  adaptation 
of  Victor  Hugo's  Le  Rot  d' Amuse,  is 
the  name  of  the  titular  "  fool."  See 
Triboulet  and  Rigoletto. 

Bess,  Bessie  or  Bessy,  a  familiar 
diminutive  for  Elizabeth,  used  either 
in  affection  or  contempt.  Thus  Good 
Queen  Bess  is  the  term  by  which  her 


countrymen  have  expressed  their 
love  and  loyalty  for  Queen  Elizabeth 
(born  1533;  reigned  1 558-1 603), 
while  Bess  o'  Bedlam  is  the  contemp- 
tuous term  for  any  female  lunatic 
vagrant,  her  male  counterpart  being 
Tom  o'  Bedlam. 

Bess,  heroine  of  Sheridan  Knowles* 
drama.  The  Beggar's  Daughter  of 
Bethnal  Green  (1828),  who  is  called 
Bessy  in  other  dramatic  versions  of 
the  ballad,  and  Bessee  in  the  original. 

Bessie,  heroine  of  Curfew  Shall  Not 
Ring  To-night,  narrative  poem  by 
Rosa  Hartwicke  Thorpe.  See  Heriot, 
Blanche. 

Bessus,  in  John  Fletcher's  comedy, 
King  or  no  King,  a  cowardly,  swag- 
gering army  captain  of  close  literary 
kindred  with  Boabdil  and  ParoUes. 
Like  Boabdil  he  excels  in  shifty 
excuses.  Having  received  a  chal- 
lenge he  writes  back  that  he  cannot 
accept  the  honor  for  thirteen  weeks 
as  he  already  has  212  duels  on  hand. 

The  story  which  Clarendon  tells  of  that 
affair  [the  panic  of  the  royal  troops  at 
Naseby]  reminds  us  of  the  excuses  by  which 
Bessus  and  Bobadil  explain  their  cudgeUngs. 
— Macaulay. 

Beverley,  in  Edward  Moore's  do- 
mestic tragedy,  The  Gamester  (1753), 
a  well-meaning,  weak-willed,  woman- 
ish man  who  lets  himself  be  duped  by 
the  transparent  villainy  of  Stukeley, 
loses  his  all  at  play,  loses  likewise  his 
sister's  fortune,  and  then  takes 
his  own  life. 

He  is  but  a  poor  creature  who  at  no  time 
enlists  the  sympathies  of  his  audience.  His 
passion  for  play  is  without  the  enthusiasm 
that  might  have  gained  for  it  some  measure 
of  respect.  The  spectator  can  only  feel 
contempt  for  a  man  who  so  readily  permits 
himself  to  be  duped  and  endures  his  mis- 
fortunes with  so  little  fortitude.  Still, 
Beverley  is  permitted  one  of  these  agonizing 
death-scenes  which  have  always  been  dear 
to  tragedians.— Hazlitt. 

Beverley,  Mrs.,  wife  of  the  above, 
full  of  unwise  devotion  and  impolitic 
patience,  who  lets  her  husband  drift 
on  to  his  ruin  without  the  angry  word 
that  might  have  saved  him. 

Beverley,  Charlotte,  sister  of  Bever- 
ley, an  amiable  girl  with  occasional 
bursts  of  justifiable  wrath,  who  rises 


Beverley 


56 


Bianca 


nobly  to  the  occasion  when  she  finds 
her  brother  has  gambled  away  her 
fortune  as  well  as  his  own.  ^ 

Beverley,  Cecilia,  heroine  of  a 
novel  by  Frances  Bumey,  Cecilia,  or 
Memoirs  of  an  Heiress  (1782).  Left 
an  orphan  with  a  fortune  and  no 
restriction  save  that  her  husband 
must  take  her  name,  Cecilia  goes  to 
London  and  is  introduced  to  society 
by  one  of  her  guardians  (Mr.  Harrel) 
and  his  wife.  That  gentleman  plun- 
ders her,  and  commits  suicide,  and 
she  transfers  her  visit  to  another 
guardian,  whose  son  Mortimer  Del- 
ville  is  deeply  in  love  with  her,  but 
because  he  considers  her  an  inferior 
in  birth  and  station  and  also  because 
he  objects  to  change  his  name  to 
Beverley  hesitates  long  before  he  pro- 
poses marriage  to  her. 

Beverley,  Ensign.  A  name  which 
Captain  Absolute,  in  Sheridan's  The 
Rivals  (1775),  assumes  in  his  court- 
ship of  Lydia  Languish — the  better 
to  impress  the  romantic  fancy  of  the 
lady  and  to  mislead  other  characters 
who  might  oppose  his  suit.  This 
masquerade  is  a  fruitful  source  of 
comic  misunderstandings  which  are 
not  fully  cleared  up  tmtil  the  last 
act. 

Bevis,  in  Scott's  romance,  Wood- 
stock, the  favorite  mastiff  or  blood- 
hound of  Sir  Harry  Lee.  He  was 
"  as  tractable  as  he  was  strong  and 
bold,"  regularly  followed  him  to 
church  and  "in  old  time  had  saved 
his  master  by  his  fidelity."  In  old 
age  he  found  his  only  joy  in  lying  by 
Sir  Henry's  feet  in  the  summer  or  by 
the  fire  in  winter  licking  his  withered 
hand  or  his  shrivelled  cheek  from  time 
to  time.  Sir  Walter  notes  that 
"  Bevis,  the  gallant  hound,  one  of 
the  handsomest  and  most  active  of 
the  ancient  Highland  deerhounds, 
had  his  prototype  in  a  dog  called 
Maida,  the  gift  of  the  late  Chief  of 
Glengarry  to  the  author.  A  beauti- 
ful sketch  of  him  was  made  by 
Edwin  Landseer  and  afterwards  en- 
graved." 

Bezaliel,  in  Dryden's  poetical 
satire,  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  an 
accomplished   and   scholarly  gentle- 


man, is  meant  for  the  Marquis  of 
Worcester,  afterwards  Duke  of  Beau- 
fort. Dryden  probably  took  the 
name  with  but  slight  alteration  from 
that  of  Bezaleel  (Heb.,  "  in  the 
shadow  of  God  "),  the  artificer  who 
executed  the  works  of  art  in  the 
tabernacle. 

'.  •  Bezonian  (It.  hisogno^  "  need  '*  or 
"business"),  an  El^abethan  name 
for  either  needy  or  needed  persons, 
but  in  both  cases  denoting  a  low  or 
mercenary  type  and  especially  a  raw 
recruit.  Thus  Pistol  asks  of  Justice 
Shallow,  when  the  latter  claims  to  be 
'*  imder  the  King  in  some  authority: 

Under  which  king,  bezonian?    Speak  or  die. 
//  Henry  IV,  v,  iii,  ns- 

The  word  is  often  but  erroneously 
printed  with  a  capital  as  if  it  were  a 
proper  noun. 

Bianca  (It.,  the  feminine  of  Bianco, 
white). 

1.  In  Shakespeare's  Taming  of  the 
Shrew  the  gentle  and  well-mannered 
younger  sister  of  Katharine,  a  strik- 
ing contrast  to  "  Kate  the  Curst." 
Afterwards  married  to  Lucentio. 

2.  In  Othello  a  woman  of  Cyprus 
with  whom  Cassio  has  an  intrigue. 

3.  In  Middleton's  Women  Cusare 
Women,  a  Venetian  beauty,  wife  of 
Leontio,  tempted  to  become  the 
Duke's  mistress. 

4.  In  Ford's  Lovers  Sacrifice. 

5.  The  heroine  of  The  Fair  Maid 
of  the  Inn,  by  Massinger  Rowley  and 
Fletcher. 

6.  In  Dean  Milman's  tragedy, 
Fazio,  the  jealous  wife  of  the  hero, 
who  ruins  him  by  false  accusations 
and  then,  failing  to  save  him  by 
confession,  goes  mad  and  dies. 

Bianca,  heroine  and  spokeswoman 
of  Mrs.  Browning's  poem,  Bianca 
among  the  Nightingales,  a  devoted 
Itahan  Ariadne  mourning  for  an 
Enghsh  Theseus  in  his  own  country, 
a  passionate  utterance  of  sorrow  and 
of  imreasoning  indignation  against 
the  northern  climate  and  landscape. 
One  may  take  it  that  the  poet  is  here 
vicariously  or  dramatically  expressing 
her  own  antipathy  against  the  native 
land  she  had  forsaken  for  Italy. 


Bickerstafl 


67 


Birch 


Bickerstaff,  Esq.,  Astrologer,  Isaac, 

the  pseudonym  of  Sir  Richard  Steele 
as  editor  of  the  Tatler  (April  12, 1709- 
January  2,  171 1).  The  name  was 
already  famous  when  he  assumed  it. 
Swift  had  invented  it  as  that  of  the 
imaginary  author  of  a  satirical  pam- 
phlet against  John  Partridge,  astrolo- 
ger and  almanac-maker.  The  last 
name  he  had  found  upon  a  black- 
smith's sign;  the  first  he  had  added 
a^  a  humorous  conjunction.  Yet  half 
a  century  later  a  real  Isaac  Bicker- 
staff  (i 735-1 785)  won  sounder  laurels 
for  the  name  as  the  author  of  many 
successful  dramas. 

Swift's  Bickerstaff  annotmced  in 
his  pamphlet  that  he  would  give  no 
vague  oracles,  such  as  Partridge's, 
but  would  foretell  events  in  a  plain, 
straightforward  manner.  He  began 
by  predicting  the  death  of  Partridge 
himself  at  a  given  day  and  hour.  On 
the  day  after  the  specified  time  a  cir- 
cumstantial narrative  appeared  re- 
counting the  fulfilment  of  the  pre- 
diction. Partridge  was  foolish  enough 
to  answer  with  a  protest  that  he  was 
still  living,  whereupon  Bickerstaflf 
issued  a  Vindication  gravely  arguing 
that  the  astrologer  was  dead,  in  spite 
of  his  assertions  to  the  contrary. 
The  joke  was  taken  up  by  all  the  town 
wits.  Rowe,  Steele,  Addison,  and 
Prior  contributed  to  it  in  various 
amusing  ways;  Congreve,  in  a  pam- 
phlet issued  under  Partridge's  name, 
made  the  poor  astrologer  complain  of 
the  discornforts  Squire  Bickerstaff  had 
exposed  him  to,  so  that  he  could  not 
leave  his  door  without  being  twitted 
for  sneaking  about  without  paying 
his  funeral  expenses;  the  Stationers' 
Company  was  induced  to  apply  for 
an  injunction  against  the  continued 
publication  of  almanacs  put  forth 
under  the  name  of  a  dead  man; 
and  it  was  even  said  that  the  Por- 
tuguese Inquisition  had  been  taken 
in  and  had  condemned  Mr.  Bick- 
erstaff's  predictions  to  the  flames. 
When  Steele  started  his  Tatler  the 
popularity  of  the  name  of  Bicker- 
staff induced  him  to  asstune  it  as 
that  of  the  pretended  editor  of  that 
periodical. 


Big-Endians,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's 
Travels,  a  religious  party  in  Lilliput, 
the  bitter  opponents  of  the  Little- 
Endians  on  the  question  whether  the 
big  or  the  Httle  end  of  an  egg  should  be 
broken  in  eating.  The  Little-Endians 
being  in  power,  the  others  are  de- 
nounced as  heretics.  Under  the  name 
Big-Endian  the  Cathohcs  are  satir- 
ized; their  opponents  represent  the 
Church  of  England. 

Biglow,  Hosea,  the  feigned  author 
of  The  Biglow  Papers  (first  series, 
1848;  second  series,  1867),  by  James 
Russell  Lowell.  See  Wilbur,  Rev. 
Homer. 

Billee,  Little,  the  nickname  given 
to  William  Bagot,  the  hero  of  George 
Du  Maurier's  novel,  Trilby  (1894),  an 
amiable,  generous,  imaginative  Eng- 
lish art  student  in  Paris  whose  boyish 
love  for  the  titular  heroine  comes 
to  a  tragic  end  even  before  the  death 
of  both.  The  portrait  is  sketched 
from  Frederick  Walker  (1840-1875), 
famous  artist  and  illustrator,  whose 
early  death  blighted  a  brilliant  prom- 
ise. The  nickname  was  borrowed 
from  a  grotesque  ballad  by  Thack- 
eray, which  he  was  fond  of  chanting 
on  social  occasions  and  which  he  had 
imitated  from  an  old  Breton  folk-song 
beginning: 

II  etait  un  petit  navire  (Jbis) 

Qui  n'avait  ja  ja  jamais  navigu6  {bis) 

The  song  is  given  in  full  in  Melusine, 
vol.  I,  p.  463. 

Binnie,  James,  of  the  Indian  Civil 
Service  in  Thackeray's  novel.  The 
Newcomes,  a  jolly,  hard-headed,  kind- 
hearted  Scotch  bachelor,  who  shares 
an  apartment  in  London  with  Colonel 
Newcome.  k^ 

Birch,  Harvey,  the  titular  "  spy  " 
in  James  Fenimore  Cooper's  novel, 
The  Spy.  With  heart  and  mind  de- 
voted to  the  patriot  cause,  and  with 
no  hope  or  wish  for  reward,  he  allows 
himself  to  be  suspected  of  being  a 
British  spy  at  the  risk  of  being  mal- 
treated or  shot  by  his  own  comrades, 
in  order  the  better  to  carry  on  his 
true  task  of  spying  on  the  enemy  and 
revealing  their  weaknesses  to  Wash- 
ington.   See  Harper. 


Biron 


58 


Black  Beauty 


Biron,  in  Shakespeare's  Love's 
Labor's  Lost  (1594),  "a  merry,  mad- 
cap lord  "  in  attendance  on  Ferdi- 
nand, King  of  Navarre.  He  is  in  love 
with  Rosaline,  and  the  raillery  ex- 
changed between  them  anticipates 
the  more  elaborate  wit  combats  be- 
tween Benedick  and  Beatrice  in 
Much  Ado  about  Nothing.  The  name 
was  originally  spelt  Berowne  and  not 
altered  until  the  second  folio.  From 
line  249  of  Act  iv,  Sc.  3,  where  it 
rhymes  with  "  moon,"  one  may  infer 
that  it  was  pronounced  Beroon.  It  is 
conjectured  that  contemporary  events 
in  France  influenced  Shakespeare  in 
his  choice  of  names  for  this  play. 
When  it  was  produced,  Henry  IV  of 
Navarre  was  king,  and  two  of  his 
most  strenuous  supporters  were  Biron 
and  Longaville. 

The  relation  in  which  Biron  stood 
to  the  English  people  between  1589 
and  1598  would  fully  account  for  the 
distinction  thus  conferred  upon  him. 
Of  all  the  leaders  on  Navarre's  side 
he  was  best  known  to  Englishmen. 
Almost  invariably  the  English  con- 
tingent served  under  him,  and  every 
one  of  those  five  years  added  some- 
thing to  the  English  knowledge  of  his 
character  (Sidney  Lee). 

Rosaline's  description  of  Biron  is 
famous: 

A  merrier  man, 
Within  the  limit  of  becoming  mirth, 
I  never  spent  an  hour's  talk  withal. 
His  eye  begets  occasion  for  his  wit. 
Which  his  fair  tongue  (conceits  expositor) 
Delivers  in  such  apt  and  gracious  words. 
That  aged  ears  play  truant  at  his  tales. 
And  younger  hearers  are  quite  ravished. 
So  sweet  and  voluble  is  his  discourse. 

Act  ii,  Sc.  I. 

In  this  character,  which  is  never  quite  in 
touch  with,  never  quite  on  a  perfect  level  of 
understanding  with,  the  other  persons  of  the 
play,  we  see,  perhaps,  a  reflex  of  Shake- 
speare himself,  when  he  has  just  become  able 
to  stand  aside  from  and  estimate  the  first 
period  of  his  poetry. — Walter  Pater. 

Biron,  Charles  De  Gontault,  Duke 
of.  A  historical  character  (1562- 
1602)  whose  last  name  Shakespeare 
is  supposed  to  have  borrowed  for  one 
of  his  characters  (see  above)  and  who 
is  the  acknowledged  hero  of  two 
tragedies  by  George  Chapman,  The 
Conspiracy  of  Duke  Biron  and    The 


Tragedy  of  Biron,  both  produced  in 
1605.  The  Duke  was  an  admiral  and 
marshal  of  France;  governor  of 
Burgundy  in  1595;  ambassador  to  the 
Court  of  St.  James  in  1601,  and  the 
trusted  friend  of  Henry  IV  until 
1602,  where  he  was  detected  in  trea- 
sonably plotting  with  Savoy  and 
Spain  for  the  dismemberment  of 
France  and  his  own  elevation  to  the 
sovereignty  of  Burgundy.  Recalled 
to  Paris,  he  was  thrown  into  the 
Bastille  and  executed. 

Birotteau,  Csesar,  titular  hero  of 
Balzac's  novel.  Greatness  and  Decline 
of  Ccesar  Birotteau,  a  perfumer  in  the 
Rue  St.  Honors,  Paris.  Affiliating 
himself  with  the  militant  royalists  he 
becomes  captain  and  then  major  of 
a  battalion  in  the  National  Guard 
and  deputy  mayor  of  the  Eleventh 
arrondissement.  In  181 8  he  was 
made  a  Chevalier  of  the  Legion  of 
Honor.  To  celebrate  the  event  he 
gave  a  grand  ball  which  necessitated 
elaborate  changes  in  his  apartments. 
Unlucky  speculations  and  extrava- 
gant living  completely  ruined  him 
within  a  year  and  he  had  to  file  a 
petition  in  bankruptcy.  Within 
three  years  he  had  settled  with  all 
his  creditors,  but  he  died  soon  after 
his  solemn  rehabilitation  by  the 
courts. 

Bisarre,  in  Farquhar's  comedy.  The 
Inconstant  (1702),  a  brilliant,  volatile, 
unconventional  young  woman,  fully 
realizing  the  meaning  of  the  French 
word  Bizarre  from  which  her  name  is 
modified.  Her  flirtations  with  Dure- 
tete  continually  involve  him  in  awk- 
ward situations. 

Blackacre,  Widow,  in  Wycherley's 
comedy,  The  Plain-Dealer. 

The  Widow  Blackacre,  beyond  all  com- 
parison Wycherley's  best  comic  character, 
is  the  Countess  in  Racine's  Plaidleurs  talking 
the  jargon  of  English,  instead  of  French, 
chicane. — Macaulay,  Comic  Dramatists  of 
the  Restoration  in  Essays. 

Black  Beauty,  a  high-bred,  gentle 
horse  who  is  supposed  to  tell  his  own 
story  in  Black  Beauty,  his  Grooms 
and  Companions,  by  Anna  Sewall. 
Through  the  breaking  of  his  knees 
by  a  drunken  groom  he  passes  from 


Black  Dwarf 


59 


Blancove 


kind  treatment  in  a  rich  man's  mews 
to  hard  knocks  and  exhausting  work 
in  a  livery  stable.  After  being  a  cab- 
horse,  a  cart-horse,  and  then  a  cab- 
horse  again,  he  is  bought  by  a  farmer 
who  recognizes  that  he  comes  from 
good  stock  and  nurses  him  back  to 
health  and  strength.  Restored  to 
something  like  his  former  condition 
he  is  purchased  by  a  family  of  ladies 
whose  coachman  is  an  old  friend  of 
his  and  the  end  of  him  is  peace. 

Black  Dwarf,  titular  hero  of  Scott's 
romance,  The  Black  Dwarf,  also 
known  as  "  Elshender  the  Recluse," 
"  Canny  Elshie,"  "  the  Wise  Wight 
of  Muckelstane  Moor,"  or  "  the 
Solitary,"  but  in  reality  he  is  Sir 
Edward  Mauley  (g.r.)- 

In  real  life  the  Black  Dwarf  was  David 
Ritchie  (1740-1811),  whom  Scott  visited  in 
the  summer  of  1797  and  reproduced  from 
memory  nineteen  years  later.  David, 
known  familiarly  as  Bowed  Davie  or  Davie 
o'  the  Wuddus  (Woodhouse),  was  just  such 
an  extraordinary  being  as  Elshie,  a  sort  of 
truncated  giant  with  remarkably  strong 
arms,  but  legs  so  diminutive  and  deformed 
that  he  stood  only  3K  feet  high.  He  was  a 
man  of  humble  birth,  however,  and  his 
motive  for  retiring  from  the  world  was  not 
blighted  love  but  simple  dread  of  ridicule. 
His  first  cottage  in  Peeblesshire  was  built 
by  his  own  hands  on  grounds  belonging  to 
the  farm  of  Woodhouse.  Scott  has  described 
it  accurately.  "David  Ritchie,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Ferguson,  "was  a  man  of  powerful 
capacity  and  original  ideas,  whose  mind  was 
thrown  oflE  its  just  bias  by  a  predominant 
degree  of  self-love  and  self-opinion,  galled 
by  the  sense  of  ridicule  and  contempt,  and 
avenging  itself  upon  society,  in  idea  at  least, 
by  a  gloomy  misanthropy."  See  W.  S. 
Crockett,  The  Scott  Originals,  p.  143. 

Blackstick,  Fairy,  in  Thackeray's 
Christmas  extravaganza,  The  Rose 
and  the  Ring  (1854),  a  mysterious 
female  sprite  with  an  ebony  wand, 
fairy  godmother  at  large  in  Paflagonia 
and  Crim  Tartary  who  gives  a  magic 
rose  to  Bulbo's  mother,  and  a  magic 
ring  to  Giglio's  mother. 

The  writer  cannot,  alasl  lay  claim  to  the 
personal  qualities  for  which  Blackstick  was 
so  remarkable,  although  she  can  fully  appre- 
ciate the  illustrious  lady's  serious  composure, 
her  austere  presence  of  mind,  her  courageous 
outspokenness  and  orderly  grasp  of  events. 
Blackstick  belongs  to  the  utilitarian  school 
of  Miss  Edgeworth  and  Mrs.  Barbauld. 
The  lighter  elegances  of  the  Mrs.  Chapones 
and  the  Laura  Matildas  of  the  day  she  put 
aside.    Neither  had  she  anything  to  do  with  ' 


your  tripping,  fanciful,  moonlight  sprites 
and  fairies,  who  waste  so  much  valuable 
time  and  strength  by  dancing  on  the  green, 
and  sitting  up  till  cockcrow;  but  a  wide  and 
most  interesting  field  of  fresh  interest  re- 
mains, which  was  specially  her  own  domain. 
— Lady  Anne  Thackeray  Ritchie,  Intro- 
duction to  The  Blackstick  Papers. 

Blair,  Adam,  hero  of  a  novel  by 
John  G.  Lockhart,  Some  Passages  in 
the  Life  of  Mr.  Adam  Blair,  Minister 
of  the  Gospel  at  Cross  Meiktree  (1822). 

Plunged  into  affliction  by  the  loss 
of  his  wife,  Adam  is  visited  by  the 
latter's  bosom  friend,  Mrs.  Campbell, 
who  has  left  her  husband  abroad.  A 
mutual  ^  love  springs  up,  of  which 
neither  is  conscious  until  Mrs.  Camp- 
bell is  ordered  home  to  the  Highland 
tower  of  her  husband.  After  bearing 
his  solitude  for  some  time,  Blair 
returns  her  visit,  arrives  at  night,  is 
rapturously  welcomed,  drinks  copi- 
ously of  wine,  gazes  with  her  on  the 
moonlit  sea,  is  again  pressed  to  the 
winecup,  and  finds  himself  next 
morning  and  is  found  by  the  servants 
clasped  in  her  embraces.  Horror- 
struck,  he  flies  to  the  desert,  repelling 
her  prayers  to  accompany  him  with 
the  wildest  execrations.  His  con- 
trition brings  on  frenzy  and  fever,  he 
is  carried  back  to  her  tower,  Jis  nursed 
by  her  during  his  deliritun,  and  re- 
covers to  find  that  she  has  caught  the 
fever  and  died.  He  then  journeys 
homeward,  proclaims  his  fall  to  the 
presbytery,  resigns  his  parish,  and 
becomes  a  day-laborer  in  his  former 
parish.  After  ten  years  of  penitence 
and  contrition,  his  neighbors  volun- 
tarily restore  him  to  his  pastorate. 

Blake,  Goody,  in  Wordsworth's 
poem,  Goody  Blake  and  Harry  Gill, 
a  True  Story,  a  poor  old  woman  driven 
by  necessity  to  pilfer  a  few  sticks  of 
wood  from  the  grounds  of  her  neigh- 
bor Gill.  He  makes  her  surrender 
them  whereupon  she  invokes  upon 
him  the  curse  that  he  may  never 
"  more  be  warm."  The  curse  is 
heard.  Ever  after  "his  teeth  they 
chatter,  chatter  still." 

Blancove,  Algernon,  in  George 
Meredith's  novel,  Rhoda  Fleming,  the 
seducer  of  Rhoda 's  sister  Dahlia,  who 
inflicts  a  still  greater  wrong  by  marry- 


Blane 


60 


Blessed  Damozel 


ing  her  under  pressure,  when  she  is 
in  love  with  another  and  he  with  her. 
Witty,  selfish,  half  cynical  to  begin 
with,  he  is  somehow  overwhelmed  by 
a  moral  revolution  which  leaves  him 
devoted  and,  indeed,  for  the  moment 
pious.  "  This  youth,"  says  another 
of  the  characters,  "  is  one  of  great 
Nature's  tom-fools,  an  elegant  young 
gentleman  outwardly  of  the  very 
krge  class  who  are  simply  the  engines 
of  their  appetites,  and  to  the  philo- 
sophic eye  still  run  wild  in  woods." 

Blane,  Niel,  in  Scott's  romance. 
Old  Mortality,  the  town  piper  and,  by 
virtue  of  his  marriage  to  the  jolly 
widow  of  a  publican,  the  landlord  of 
the  Howf.  After  his  wife's  death  he 
initiated  their  daughter  Nelly  "  in 
those  cares  which  had  been  faithfully 
performed  by  his  wife." 

Bias,  Gil,  hero  of  a  picaresque 
romance,  The  Adventures  of  Gil  Bias 
de  Santillane  (17 15),  by  Alain  Ren4 
Le  Sage.  Gil  Bias,  brought  up  by  his 
uncle.  Canon  Gil  Perez,  starts  out  as 
a  raw  lad  to  seek  his  fortunes  and 
gradually  wins  his  way  from  the  con- 
dition of  a  valet  to  that  of  a  secretary, 
and  from  the  service  of  private  gentle- 
man to  that  of  the  Prime  Minister  of 
Spain.  This  career  brings  him  in 
contact  with  people  of  almost  every 
condition,  whom  he  sees  as  they  are 
and  not  as  they  claim  to^  be,  and  the 
suggestion  at  every  step  is  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  in  the  world  as  sub- 
stance, that  all  is  a  show  and  a  very 
bad  one.  Doctors  are  little  better 
than  murderers,  lawyers  are  licensed 
robbers,  the  clergy  do  not  practise 
what  they  preach.  The  very  min- 
isters of  state  are  panderers  and  para- 
sites, revenging  themselves  for  slights 
received  from  royalty  by  an  over- 
bearing demeanor  towards  their  in- 
feriors. Lastly,  the  king  is  but  a 
wretched  puppet  in  the  hands  of  his 
ministers,  pretending  to  govern  the 
country  but  actually  passing  his  life 
in  signmg  his  name  to  papers  he  never 
reads  and  in  gossiping  over  frivolous 
scandals  that  do  not  reallyiconcem  him. 

Gil  Bias  ...  Is  naturally  disposed 
towards  honesty,  though  with  a  mind  unfor- 
tunately too  ductile  to  resist  the  temptations 


of  opportunity  or  example.  He  is  constitu- 
tionally timid,  and  yet  occasionally  capable 
of  doing  brave  actions;  shrewd  and  intelli- 
gent, but  apt  to  be  deceived  by  his  own 
vanity;  with  wit  enough  to  make  us  laugh 
with  him  at  others,  and  follies  enough  to 
turn  the  jest  frequently  against  himself. 
Generous,  good-natured,  and  humane,  he 
has  virtues  sufi&cient  to  make  us  love  him, 
and,  as  to  respect,  it  is  the  last  thing  which 
he  asks  at  his  reader's  hand. — Sir  W.  Scott. 

Blatant  Beast,  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene,  a  huge,  bellowing  monster 
typical  of  slander  or  calumny.  It 
had  100  tongues  and  a  sting.  Sir 
Artegal  goes  in  pursuit  of  it  in  Canto 
v  and  Sir  Calidore  restmies  the  pur- 
suit in  Canto  vi.  But,  as  Macaulay 
says,  not  one  in  a  hundred  readers 
perseveres  to  the  end  of  the  poem. 
"  Very  few  and  very  weary  are  those 
who  are  in  at  the  death  of  the  Blatant 
Beast."  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
Beast  does  not  die.  It  is  pursued  and 
taken,  but  not  killed,  by  Calidore. 
Indeed,  for  aught  anybody  rnay  learn 
from  the  poem,  it  may  be  still  roaming 
the  earth: 

Then  was  this  monster  by  the  mastering 

might 
Of  doughty  Calidore  suppressed  and  tamed. 
That  never  more  he  might  endamage  wight 
With  his  vile  tongue  which  many  had  de- 
famed, 
And  many  causeless  caused  to  be  blamed. 
So  did  he  eke  long  after  this  remain 
Until  that  (whether  wicked  fate  so  framed 
Or  fault  of  men)  he  broke  his  iron  chain 
And  got  into  the  world  at  liberty  again. 
Book  vi.  Canto  la. 

Blefuscu,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's 
Travels,  an  imaginary  island  "  sit- 
uated to  the  northeast  side  of  Lilliput, 
from  whence  it  is  parted  only  by  a 
channel  of  eight  htmdred  yards  wide." 
Ruled  over  by  an  emperor,  it  is 
peopled,  like  Lilliput,  by  pygmies. 

Blefuscu  is  France,  and  the  ingratitude 
of  the  Lilliputian  court,  which  forces  Gulli- 
ver to  take  shelter  there  rather  than  have 
his  eyes  put  out,  is  an  indirect  reproach  upon 
that  of  England,  and  a  vindication  of  the 
flight  of  Ormond  and  Bolingbroke  to  Paris. 
—Sir  W.  Scott,  Life  of  Swift. 

Blessed  Damozel,  subject  and  title 
of  a  poem  (1850)  by  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti.  The  damozel,  one  of  the 
blessed  or  saved  in  heaven,  leans  out 
yearningly  towards  her  betrothed  on 
earth.     Hall  Caine  tells  us  that  the 


Blifil 


61 


Bloughram 


poem  grew  out  of  Rossetti's  youthful 
love  for  Poe's  Raven.  "  I  saw," 
Rossetti  said  to  Caine,"  that  Poe  had 
done  the  utmost  it  was  possible  to  do 
with  the  grief  of  the  lover  on  earth, 
so  I  determined  to  reverse  the  con- 
ditions, and  give  utterance  to  the 
groaning  of  the  loved  one  in  heaven." 
Blifil,  in  Fielding's  novel,  The 
History  of  Tom  Jones,  a  Foundling, 
a  consummate  scoundrel  and  hypo- 
crite, introduced  as  a  foil  to  the  open- 
hearted  yet  erring  hero.  Pretend- 
ing to  be  a  friend  to  the  latter  he 
assumes  over  him  an  air  of  superior 
morality,  but  is  eventually  detected 
as  a  libertine,  a  hypocrite,  a  liar  and 
a  swindler.  The  only  indication 
as  to  his  Christian  name  is  in  a 
note  signed  "W.  Blifil"  in  Book  vii. 
Chap.  ii. 

Blifil  is  perhaps  the  only  case  (for  Johna- 
than  Wild  is  a  satire,  not  a  history  or,  as 
M.  Taine  fancies,  a  tract)  in  which  Fielding 
seems  to  lose  his  unvarying  coolness  of 
judgment,  and  the  explanation  is  obvious. 
The  one  fault  to  which  he  is,  so  to  speak, 
unjust  is  hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy  cannot 
indeed  be  painted  too  black,  but  it  should 
not  be  made  impossible.  When  Fielding 
has  to  deal  with  such  a  character  he  for 
once  loses  his  self-command,  and,  like 
inferior  writers,  begins  to  be  angry  with  his 
creatures.  Instead  of  analyzing  and  explain- 
ing he  simply  leaves  us  in  presence  of  a 
moral  anomaly. — Sir  Leslie  Stephen, 
Hours  in  a  Library — Fielding. 

Blonde!  de  Nesle,  the  famous  trou- 
badour minstrel  beloved  by  Richard, 
Coeur  de  Leon.  He  discovered  the 
prison  in  which  his  royal  master  was 
immured  and  helped  to  _  plot  his 
escape.  Blondel  appears  in  Scott's 
historical  romance.  The  Talisman. 
He  entertains  the  king  and  his  court 
encamped  before  Jerusalem. 

Blood,  Lydia,  heroine  of  Howells' 
novel.  The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook 
(1879),  who  earns  the  nickname  as  the 
only  female  passenger  aboard  the 
Aroostook,  a  sailing  vessel  bound  for 
Venice. 

A  rare  and  charming  personation,  a 
heroine  who  is  distinctly  and  honestly 
countrified  without  a  tinge  of  vulgarity  and 
who,  though  taking  but  a  modest  part  in 
the  conversation  of  which  the  book  is  full, 
never  for  a  moment  loses  her  individuality 
or  incurs  the  reproach  of  tameness. — N.  Y. 
Nation. 


Blood,  Colonel  Thomas,  a  historical 
character  (i  628-1680)  introduced  into 
Scott's  novel,  Peveril  of  the  Peak,  as 
an  emissary  of  the  second  Duke  of 
Buckingham.  The  Duke  himself  thus 
describes  him  to  Jemingham: 

There  goes  a  scoundrel  after  my  own 
heart,  a  robber  from  his  cradle,  a  murderer 
since  he  could  hold  a  knife,  a  profound  hypo- 
crite in  religion,  and  a  worse  and  deeper 
hypocrite  in  honour — would  sell  his  soul  to 
the  devil  to  accomplish  any  villainy,  and 
would  cut  the  throat  of  his  brother,  did  he 
dare  to  give  the  villainy  he  had  so  acted  its 
right  name. 

His  most  notorious  exploit  was  the 
theft  of  the  crown  from  the  Tower. 

Bloughram,  Sylvester,  the  hero  and 
spokesman  of  Bishop  Bloughram's 
Apology  in  Robert  Browning's  volume 
of  miscellaneous  poems,  Men  and 
Women  (1885). 

He  is  a  sceptical  churchman  whose 
emotions  still  cling  to  the  faith  on 
which  his  intellect  has  relaxed  its 
hold.  Talking  over  the  walnuts  and 
raisins  to  Gigadibs,  the  literary  man, 
he  expounds  his  theory  of  life.  He 
doubts  indeed,  but  he  is  too  true  a 
sceptic  to  be  certain  even  of  his 
doubt.  He  accepts  the  honors  and 
emoluments  of  a  Church  whose  doc- 
trines offend  his  reason,  for  who  can 
assure  him  that  his  reason  is  right  in 
taking  offence?  So  long  as^  that 
"  plaguey  hundredth  chance "  re- 
mains that  they  may  be  true,  is  it 
not  the  part  of  wisdom  to  accept 
them  and  teach  them — to  strangle 
the  doubts  which  for  aught  he  knows 
may  be  hell-bom?^  He  is  living  in 
comfort,  in  honor,  in  peace  of  mind; 
he  is  venerated  by  his  co-religionists; 
his  titles  earn  him  the  respect  of  the 
worldly;  he  is  even  an  object  of  flat- 
tering curiosity  and  interest  to  those 
higher  minds  who  think  him  a  hypo- 
crite and  affect  to  despise  him.  Why 
should  he  throw  aside  all  the  good 
things  of  the  present,  the  chances  of 
better  things  in  the  future,  for  the 
sake  of  a  sincerity  which  might  look 
pretty  in  poetry  but  for  which  there 
is  no  real  need  and  no  place  in  this 
worid?  The  true  philosophy  is  not 
to  strive  after  the  impossible  ought  to 
be,  but  to  find  out  what  is,  and  to 


Blouzelind 


62 


Blushington 


make  that  as  fair  as  you  can.  This 
philosophy  may  not  be  a  very  lofty 
one,  but  in  the  very  moderation  of 
its  ideals  and  the  certainty  of  their 
attainment  is  it  not,  he  asks,  prefer- 
able to  the  Gigadibs  theory,  which 
aims  at  the  highest  and  attains 
nothing? 

Blouzelind  or  Blouzelinda,  in  the 
first  pastoral  of  John  Gay's  Shepherd's 
Week  (17 1 4),  a  shepherdess  in  love 
with  Lobbin  Clout.  The  name  varies 
according  to  the  exigencies  of  metre 
and  is  spelled  indiscriminately  with 
a  tt  or  a  «;.  Its  uncouthness  was  evi- 
dently designed  as  part  of  Gay's  plan 
to  ridicule  the  Delias  and  Aramintas 
of  pseudo-pastoral  poetry.  "  Thou 
wilt  not,"  says  Gay,  **  find  my  shep- 
herdesses idly  piping  on  their  reeds, 
but  milking  the  kine,  tying  up  the 
sheaves,  or,  if  the  hogs  are  astray, 
driving  them  into  the  sties."  Blou- 
zelinda is  painted  as  an  ignorant,  un- 
kempt, frolicsome  lass  but  to  her  lover 
she  is  perfection: 

My  Blouzelinda  is  the  blithest  lass, 
Than    primrose    sweeter,    or    the    clover- 
grass     ... 
My  Blouzelind 's  than  gilliflower  more  fair. 
Than  daisie,  marygold,  or  kingcup  rare. 

Sweet  is  my  toil  when  Blowzelind  is  near. 
Of  her  bereft  'tis  winter  all  the  year     .     .     . 
Come,  Blowzelinda,  ease  thy  swain's  desire. 
My  summer's  shadow,  and  my  winter's  fire. 

Scott  borrows  the  name  with  a 
further  change  to  Blowselinda  for  an 
inmate  of  Whitefriars  (alternatively 
known  as  Bonstrops)  whose  room  was 
suggested  as  a  refuge  for  Nigel  when 
he  sought  sanctuary  in  Alsatia. 

Bludsoe,  Jim,  in  John  Hay's  poem 
of  that  name  {Pike  County  Ballads), 
was  in  real  life  Oliver  Fairchild, 
engineer  of  the  steamer  Fashion,  ply- 
ing between  Memphis  and  St.  Louis, 
who  beached  his  burning  ship  and 
sacrificed  himself  to  save  passengers 
and  crew  exactly  as  Hay  narrates. 
The  poet  had  known  Fairchild  per- 
sonally in  his  boyhood  days.  Mark 
Twain  found  fault  with  the  ballad  on 
the  score  that  no  engineer  could  per- 
form the  feat  ascribed  to  him. 

Bludyer,  Mr.,  in  Thackeray's  novel, 
Pendennis  (1850),  a  "  slashing  "  book 


reviewer  who  "  had  a  certain  notori- 
ety in  his  profession  and  reputation 
for  savage  humor.  He  smashed  and 
trampled  down  the  poor  spring  flowers 
with  no  more  mercy  than  a  bull  would 
have  on  a  parterre;  and  having  cut 
up  the  volume  to  his  heart's  content, 
went  and  sold  it  at  a  bookstall,  and 
purchased  a  pint  of  brandy  with  the 
proceeds  of  the  volume "  (Chap, 
xxxv).  He  also  makes  brief  appear- 
ances in  Men's  Wives,  the  Ravenswood 
(1843),  and  Reading  a  Poem  (1841). 

Bluf if,  Captain  Noll.  In  Congreve's 
coniedy,  The  Old  Bachelor,  a  bragga- 
docio and  a  coward. 

Those  ancients,  as  Noll  Bluff  might  say. 
Were  pretty  fellows  In  their  day. 

Sir  W.  Scott. 

Blumine,  the  "  Rose  Goddess  "  in 
Carlyle's  Sartor  Resartus  (i  833-1 834), 
chapter  Romance,  with  whom  Teufels- 
drockh  was  in  love.  Apparently  she 
is  a  composite  figure  made  up  from 
Jean  Welsh  whom  Carlyle  married, 
Margaret  Gordon,  his  first  love,  and 
Kitty  Kirkpatrick,  to  whose  cousin, 
Charles  BuUer,  he  was  tutor. 

On  his  own  confession  "Sartor"  was 
"not  to  be  trusted  in  details,"  albeit  many 
of  the  dramatic  situations  in  the  book  were 
personal  experience  idealised.  Blumine,  the 
Rose-Goddess,  was  "unhappily  dependent 
and  insolvent;  living,  perhaps,  on  the  not 
too  gracious  bounty  of  moneyed  relations." 
This  was  Margaret  Gordon.  Blumine  was 
"young,  hazel-eyed,  beautiful,  and  some- 
one's cousin;  high-bom  and  of  high  spirit." 
This  was  in  part  Kitty  Kirkpatrick,  in  part 
Jane  Welsh.  All  three  entered  in  turn  into 
Carlyle's  colour-scheme.  Doubtless  Kitty 
Kirkpatrick,  as  well  as  Margaret  Gordon 
and  Jane  Welsh,  made  Carlyle  "immortal 
by  a  kiss."  No  biographical  evidence,  how- 
ever, exists  for  any  such  tragic  rejection  and 
parting  as  that  described  in  anticlimax  in 
Romance,  except  in  the  story  of  young 
Carlyle's  abortive  love  for  Margaret  Gor- 
don, when,  after  the  kiss  had  made  Teufels- 
drockh  immortal,  "thick  curtains  of  night 
rushed  over  his  soul,  as  rose  the  immeasur- 
able crash  of  doom;  and  through  the  ruins 
as  of  a  shivered  universe  was  the  falling, 
falling,  towards  the  abyss." — J.  M.  Sloan 
in  T.  P.'s  Weekly,  January  13,  1911. 

Blushington,  Edward,  hero  of  the 
comic  drama,  The  Bashful  Man 
(1857),  by  W.  T.  Moncrief.  He  is  so 
shy  that  he  cannot  muster  up  cour- 
age to  propose  marriage  to  Dinah 


Bly 


63 


Bobadil 


Friendly,  despite  all  her  coquettish 
advances,  until  the  pyschologic  mo- 
ment arrives  when  he  is  flushed  by 
wine. 

Bly,  Nelly,  in  Gnmdy  and  Solo- 
mon's operetta,  The  Vicar  of  Bray 
(1882),  a  ballet  girl  beloved  by 
Thomas  Merton.  The  name  was 
assumed  as  a  pseudonym  by  a  New 
York  female  joumaUst  who  especially 
signalized  herself  in  1890  by  making 
a  tour  of  the  world  to  beat  the  record 
of  Phileas  Fogg  in  Eighty  Days 
Around  the  World. 

Boatswain,  a  dog  belonging  to 
Lord  Byron — 

Who  was  bom  at  Newfoundland  May,  1803, 
And  died  at  Newstead  Abbey  Nov.  18,  1808. 

So  says  the  prose  inscription  on  the 
monument  which  Byron  raised  to  his 
memory  in  the  garden  of  Newstead 
which  further  informs  us  that  he 
"  had  all  the  Virtues  of  Man  with- 
out his  Vices."  A  poetical  inscription 
following  the  prose  concludes  with 
this  couplet: 

To  mark  a  friend's  remains,  these  stones 

arise; 
I  never  knew  but  one, — and  here  he  lies. 

Byron  thus  announced  the  death 
of  this  favorite  to  Hodgson:^  "  Boat- 
swain is  dead! — he  expired  in  a  state 
of  madness  on  the  i8th  after  suffering 
much,  yet  retaining  all  the  gentleness 
of  his  nature  to  the  last;  never  at- 
tempting to  do  the  least  injury  to  any 
one  near  him.  I  have  now  lost  every- 
thing except  old  Murray.**  In  a  will 
executed  in  191 1  he  desired  to  be 
buried  in  a  vault  with  his  dog  and  Joe 
Murray. 

Bob,  Son  of  Battle,  hero  and  title 
of  a  novel  (1898)  by  Alfred  Ollivant, 
who  must  thus  be  credited  with  the 
invention  of  the  novelistic  dog. 
Horses  have  often  figured  in  fiction. 
So  indeed  have  dogs,  but  only  in  a 
subordinate  way.  Ouida's  Puck,  for 
example,  is  the  narrator  of  the  story 
in  which  he  plays  a  small  part,  but  he 
is  an  impossible  dog  in  a  wild  romance 
while  Bob  is  a  real  dog  whose  ad- 
ventures are  severely  realistic.  "  Owd 
Bob,"  as  he  is  sometimes  nicknamed, 
is  the  last  of  the  renowned  "  gray 


dogs  of  Kenmuir,"  a  fine  and  saga- 
cious breed  of  Shepherds  in  which  the 
dalesman  took  great  pride.  He  be- 
haves with  lofty  and  pathetic  dignity 
when  his  rival  and  enemy,  "  Red 
Wull,"  the  tailless  Tyke,  is  caught 
red-fanged  in  the  commission  of  the 
one  capital  crime  of  the  sheep-dog. 

Bobadil,  Captain,  in  Ben  Jonson's 
comedy,  Every  Man  in  his  Humor 
(i599)t  a  braggadoccio,  bully  and 
coward,  '*  a  man  of  big  words  and 
little  heart,"  whose  bluster  dupes 
many  into  the  belief  that  he  is  a 
valiant  soldier  of  great  achievement. 
"  He  is,"  says  Hazlitt,  "  the  real  hero 
of  the  piece.  His  extravagant  affec- 
tation, his  blustering  and  cowardice, 
are  an  entertaining  medley,  and  his 
final  defeat  and  exposure,  though 
exceedingly  humorous,  are  the  most 
affecting  part  of  the  story."  Barry 
Cornwall  deemed  him  worthy  to 
march  in  the  same  regiment  with 
Bessus,  Pistol,  Parolles  and  the  Cop- 
per Captain  (see  these  entries). 

It  is  not  generally  known  that  the  original 
of  Ben  Jonson's  "Bobadil"  was  an  officer  of 
high  rank  in  the  army  of  the  Duke  of  Alva, 
whom  the  haughty  Philip  II  sent  to  subdue 
the  Netherlands.  After  the  battle  of  Giesen, 
near  Mons,  in  1570,  Strada  informs  us,  in  his 
Historia  de  Bello  Belgico,  that  to  fill  Spain 
with  the  news,  the  Duke  of  Alva,  as  haughty 
in  ostentation  as  in  action,  sent  Captain 
Bobadilla  to  the  king,  to  congratulate  his 
majesty  upon  the  victory  won  by  his  arms 
and  influence.  The  ostentation  of  the  mes- 
sage, and  still  more  of  the  person  who  bore 
it,  was  the  origin  of  the  name  being  applied 
to  any  vain-glorious  boaster. — Spence's 
Anecdotes. 

Bobadil,  especially.  Is  one  of  Ben's 
masterpieces.  He  is  the  most  colossal 
coward  and  braggart  of  the  comic  stage. 
He  can  swear  by  nothing  less  terrible  than 
"by  the  body  of  Caesar,"  or  "by  the  foot  of 
Pharaoh,"  when  his  oath  is  not  something 
more  terrific  still,  namely,  "by  my  valor  1 
Every  schoolboy  knows  the  celebrated  pas- 
sage in  which  the  boasting  captain  offers 
to  settle  the  aflFairs  of  Europe  by  associatmg 
with  himself  twenty  other  Bobadils,  as  cun- 
ning i'  the  fence  as  himself,  and  challengmg 
an  army  of  forty  thousand  men,  twenty  at 
a  time,  and  killing  the  whole  in  a  certain 
number  of  days.  Leaving  out  the  cowardice, 
we  may  say  there  was  something  of  Bobadil 
in  Jonson  himself;  and  it  may  be  shrewdly 
suspected  that  his  conceit  of  destroying  an 
army  in  this  fashion  came  into  his  head  m 
the  exultation  of  feeling  which  followed  his 
own  successful  exploit,  in  the  presence  of 
both   armies,   when   he   was   a  soldier   in 


Bodach  Glas 


64 


Bombastes  Furioso 


Flanders.  Old  John  Dennis  described  genius 
"as  a  furious  joy  and  pride  of  school  at  the 
conception  of  an  extraordinary  hint."  Ben 
had  this  "furious  joy  and  pride,"  not  only 
in  the  conception  of  extraordinary  hints, 
but  in  the  doing  of  extraordinary  things. — 
Atlantic  Monthly,  October,  1867. 

Bodach  Glas  (Glas  is  the  Gaelic  for 
Gray,  and  Bodach,  from  the  Saxon 
Bode,  means  a  messenger),  in  Scott's 
novel  of  Waverley,  a  ghostly  bearer 
of  evil  tidings,  who  appeared  to  the 
head  of  the  Maclvor  family  whenever 
any  calamity  was  at  hand  (see  espe- 
cially Chapter  lix,  where  Fergus 
Maclvor  is  warned  of  his  coming 
doom).  A  superstition  of  this  kind 
was  a  common  one  in  the  great  Scot- 
tish famihes.  Thus  the  family  of 
Rothmurchan  had  the  Bodach  an 
Dun,  or  Ghost  of  the  Hill,  and  the  Kin- 
cardines,  the  Spectre  of  the  Bloody 
Hand.  Gartinbeg  Castle  was  haimted 
by  Bodach  Gartin  and  Tulloch- 
gorum  by  Mauch  Moulach,  or  the 
Girl  with  the  Hairy  Left  Hand. 

Bodwinkle,  in  Laurence  OHphant's 
novel,  Picadilly  (1870),  a  cockney 
promoter  who  launches  more  or  less 
shady  companies  in  London.  Having 
pursued  wealth  as  an  end  through 
years  of  toil,  he  and  his  wife  perceive, 
as  their  mental  horizon  expands,  that 
it  may  be  used  as  the  stepping  stone 
to  social  distinction.  Through  the 
agency  of  Spifiington  Goldby's  they 
reach  a  position  where  they  are  toler- 
ated: first,  because  they  spend  thou- 
sands in  dinners,  concerts  and  balls, 
and  secondly,  because  they  look  for 
no  equivalent  beyond  a  few  crumbs 
of  contemptuous  notice. 

Boflin,  Nicodemus,  in  Dickens's 
novel,  Our  Mutual  Friend  (1864),  the 
foreman  of  old  John  Harmon,  dust- 
man and  miser,  who  as  the  latter's 
residuary  legatee  comes  in  for  £100,- 
000  imtil  the  discovery  of  Harmon's 
son.  Hence  Boffin  is  sometimes 
known  as  the  **  Golden  Dustman." 
He  is  described  as  "  a  broad,  round- 
shouldered,  one-sided  old  fellow, 
whose  face  was  of  the  rhinoceros 
build,  with  over-lapping  ears."  He 
is  generous  and  kindly  and  a  model 
of  integrity.  His  prototype  is  said 
to  have  been  one  Henry  Dodd,  a 


contractor  of  City  Wharf,  New  North 
Road,  Hoxton. 

Bollngbroke,  Henry,  Duke  of  Here- 
ford, in  Shakespeare's  historical 
drama,  Richard  II,  reappears  as  the 
king  in  the  three  parts  of  Henry  IV 
by  the  same  author. 

Bolingbroke,  who  pushes  Richard  from 
the  throne,  is  a  man  framed  for  such  material 
success  as  waits  on  personal  ambition.  He 
is  not,  like  his  son  Henry  V,  filled  with  high 
enthusiasm  and  sacred  force  derived  from 
the  powers  of  heaven  and  earth.  All  Boling- 
broke's  strength  and  craft  are  his  own.  His 
is  a  resolute  gaze  which  sees  his  object  far 
off,  and  he  has  persistency  and  energy  of 
will  to  carry  him  off  without  faltering.  He 
is  not  cruel,  but  shrinks  from  no  deed  that 
is  useful  to  his  purpose  because  the  deed  is 
cruel.— E.  Dowden,  Shakespeare  Primer. 

Bolton,  Fanny,  in  The  History  of 
Pendennis,  by  Thackeray,  the  daugh- 
ter of  the  portress  of  Shepherd's  Inn, 
pretty,  foolish  and  sentimental,  who 
falls  desperately  in  love  with  Arthur. 
She  adorns  him  with  all  the  heroic 
virtues,  and  he  for  a  time  is  stimulated 
into  a  temporary  passion  which  he 
conquers  before  it  has  done  harm  to 
any  one. 

Boltrope,  in  J.  Fenimore  Cooper's 
romance  of  the  sea,  The  Pilot.  The 
author  considered  this  a  finer  bit  of 
character  painting  than  Long  Tom 
Coffin  in  the  same  novel. 

We  cannot  assent  to  this  comparative 
estimate;  but  we  admit  that  Boltrope  has 
not  had  full  justice  done  to  him  in  popular 
judgment.  It  is  but  a  slight  sketch,  but  it 
is  extremely  well  done.  His  death  is  a  bit 
of  manly  and  genuine  pathos;  and  in  his 
conversations  with  the  chaplain  there  is 
here  and  there  a  touch  of  true  humor,  which 
we  value  the  more  because  humor  was  cer- 
tainly not  one  of  the  author's  best  gifts. — 
Atlantic  Monthly,  January,  1862. 

Bolus,  Benjamin,  hero  of  a  farce 
by  Munden  the  comedian,  Benjamin 
Bolus  or  the  Newcastle  Apothecary, 
which  was  performed  at  the  Hay- 
market  for  his  benefit  August  8,  1797. 
It  is  founded  upon  a  comic  poem  by 
George  Colman,  in  Broad  Grins,  a 
collection  of  miscellaneous  tales  in 
verse  first  pubUshed  (1797)  under  the 
title,  My  Nightcap  and  Slippers. 

Bombastes  Furioso,  in  a  burlesque 
tragic  opera  of  that  name  (18 10),  by 
William  Barnes  Rhodes,  a  general 
commanding  the  army  of  Artaxamin- 


Bonduca 


65 


Bonnard 


ous,  King  of  Utopia.  The  monarch 
wishes  to  divorce  his  Queen  Griskin- 
issa  for  Distafifina,  the  betrothed  of 
Bombastes,  and  wooes  her  with  the 
offer  of  half  a  crown,  which  she 
accepts.  Bombastes  goes  mad  and 
among  other  exploits  Imngs  his  boots 
upon  a  tree,  with  this  de^nt  legend: 

Who  dares  this  pair  of  boots  displace 
Must  meet  Bombastes  face  to  face. 

Artaxaminous  accepts  the  chal- 
lenge, cuts  down  the  boots  and  is 
slain  by  Bombastes.  More  men  are 
killed,  and  at  the  end  the  dead  all 
rise  again  and  join  in  a  dance,  promis- 
ing the  audience  to  die  again  to- 
morrow. The  farce  is  a  travesty  on 
Orlando  Furioso  (q.v.),  the  mad  hero 
of  which  hangs  up  his  armor  on  a  tree 
with  the  legend: 

Orlando's  arms  let  none  displace. 
Or  meet  Orlando  face  to  face. 

Bonduca  (an  alternate  name  for 
Boadicea),  heroine  and  title  of  a 
tragedy  (1611)  by  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher.  Like  the  tragedies  of 
Boadicea  by  Hopkins  and  Glover, 
Bonduca  is  founded  on  Tacitus, 
Annals,  xiv,  29.  Caractacus  is  here 
called  Caratach.  The  play  was  re- 
cast by  J.  R.  Planche  and  revived 
(1837)  imder  the  title  of  Caractacus. 

Bon  Gaultier,  the  pretended  author 
of  the  Bon  Gaultier  Ballads  which 
originally  appeared  in  Tail's  Maga- 
zine (1842-1844)  and  were  the  joint 
authorship  of  William  Edmonston 
Aytoun  and  Theodore  Martin.  The 
name  comes  from  Rabelais — "  A  moy 
n'est  que  honneiir  et  gloire  d'estre 
diet  et  repute  Bon  Gaultier  et  bon 
compaignon;  en  ce  nom,  suis  bien 
venu  en  toutes  bonnes  compaignies 
de  Pantagru^listes."  The  Bon  Gaul- 
tier of  the  ballads  was  at  once  made 
welcome  in  all  good  companies  of 
people  who  liked  vigorous  and  racy 
humor.  Some  too  fastidious  persons 
have  been  very  angry  with  the 
authors  for  a  supposed  irreverence  in 
these  parodies.  Mr.  Martin  pro- 
tested that  parody  is  a  veiled  com- 
pliment, and  that  it  was  precisely 
the  poets  whom  they  most  admired 
that  they  imitated  most  frequently. 
5 


"  This  was  not  certainly  from  any 
want  of  reverence,  but  rather  out  of 
the  ftdness  of  our  admiration,  just 
as  the  excess  of  a  lover's  fondness 
runs  over  into  raillery  of  the  very 
quaUties  that  are  dearest  to  his 
heart." 

Boniface,  in  Scott's  historic  ro- 
mance. The  Monastery,  is  Lord  Abbot 
of  St.  Mary's;  in  its  sequel,  The 
Abbot,  he  has  retired  to  private  life 
under  the  name  of  Blinkhoohe  as  the 
proprietor  of  a  large  garden  at  Kin- 
ross. Good-natured,  easy-going  and 
charitable,  he  had  sought  the  seclu- 
sion of  the  cloister  for  quiet,  but  the 
turmoil  of  the  times  had  deprived  him 
of  his  rest  as  Abbot,  and  even  in  re- 
tirement he  was  "  dragged  into 
matters  where  both  heading  and 
hangingsarelike  tobe  theissue."  At 
the  end  he  sighs,  "A  weary  life} I 
have  had  for  one  to  whom  peace  was 
ever  the  dearest  blessing!  " 

Boniface,  Will,  in  Farquhar's  com- 
edy. The  Beaux  Stratagem  (1707), 
landlord  of  the  inn  at  Lichfield,  in 
league  with  the  highwaymen,  but  of 
so  sleek  and  jolly  an  exterior  that  he 
is  a  great  favorite  with  all  customers. 
His  pet  expression  "  as  the  saying  is  " 
he  lugs  into  his  talk  with  ludicrous 
irrelevance,  as  "  Does  your  master 
stay  in  town  as  the  saying  is?  "  and 
"I'm  old  Will  Boniface,  pretty  well 
known  along  this  road,  as  the  saying 
is."  The  popularity  of  this  character 
has  caused  the  name  Boniface  to  be 
a  generic  one  for  a  publican  or  tavern 
keeper. 

Bonnard,  Sylvestre,  hero  of  Anatole 
France's  novel,  The  Crime  of  Sylvestre 
Bonnard.  A  learned,  simple-minded, 
kindly  gentleman,  an  archaeologist 
and  a  member  of  the  Institute,  Bon- 
nard's  **  crime "  was  that  of  ab- 
ducting a  minor,  a  young  girl  in 
whom  he  is  platonically  interested, 
from  a  wretched  school  near  Paris 
wherer  she  is  cruelly  maltreated.  He 
escapes  penal  prosecution  only  by 
the  accident  that  Jeanne's  guardian 
had  already  decamped  with  the 
money  of  all  his  clients.  Hence 
Jeanne  becomes  naturally  and  legally 
the  ward  of  her  good  old  friend. 


Bonnivard 


66 


Booth 


Bonnivard,  Francis,  a  historical 
character  (1495-1570),  who  has  had 
undeserved  dignity  thrust  upon  him 
in  Byron's  poem,  The  Prisoner  of  Chil- 
ian. Instead  of  losing  one  brother 
by  fire,  two  in  the  field,  and  two  by 
death  in  the  dungeon,  the  fact  is  that 
there  is  no  evidence  that  he  had  any 
brothers  at  all,  and  none  that  his 
father  died  for  his  faith.  Byron  him- 
self acknowledges  that  he  was  un- 
acquainted with  the  history  of  Bon- 
nivard when  he  wrote  the  poem.  He 
subsequently  wrote  a  sonnet  to  his 
hero,  in  which  he  represents  him  as  a 
high-minded  patriot  appealing  "  from 
tyranny  to  God,"  and  this  character 
has  sometimes  been  ascribed  to  him 
by  historians.  In  plain  truth,  there 
was  little  of  the  heroic  about  Bonni- 
vard. He  was  simply  a  good-natured 
scatter-brain,  whose  high  animal 
spirits  and  graceless  wit  were  con- 
tinually getting  him  into  trouble;  and 
he  seems  to  have  employed  the  six 
years  of  his  imprisonment  chiefly  in 
making  immoral  verses. 

Bontemps,  Roger,  an  ideal  personi- 
fication of  cheery  content  and  unshak- 
able optimism  current  among  the 
French  peasantry  whom  Beranger  im- 
mortalized in  one  of  his  most  famous 
songs  (18 1 4).  The  opening  stanza  is 
thus  translated  by  William  Young: 

To  show  our  hypochondriacs, 

In  days  the  most  forlorn, 
A  pattern  set  before  their  eyes, 

Roger  Bontemps  was  born. 
To  live  obscurely  at  his  will, 

To  keep  aloof  from  strife, — 
Hurrah  for  fat  Roger  Bontemps! 

This  is  his  rule  of  life. 

Booth,  Amelia,  titular  heroine  of 
Fielding's  novel,  Amelia  (1751),  the 
ever-loving,  ever-amiable  and  ever- 
forgiving  wife  of  the  graceless  Captain 
Booth.  This  new  type  of  wifehood 
was  not  greatly  relished  either  by  the 
belles  or  the  beaux  of  Fielding's  age. 
Elizabeth  Carter  tells  us  that  they 
pronounced  her  history  "  sad  stuff," 
though  Miss  Carter  herself  does  not 
seem  to  concur  in  the  verdict.  Field- 
ing felt  the  weight  of  public  disap- 
proval. With  semi-defiant  humor  he 
acknowledged  as  much  in  the  Coven  t 
Garden  Journal,  which  he  edited.    He 


brings  the  novel  before  his  own 
"  Court  of  Censorial  Enquiry,"  and 
lets  Amelia's  accusers  speak,  but  he 
disdains  to  plead  her  cause  against 
them.  "  If  you,  Mr.  Censor,  are 
yourself  a  Parent,  you  will  view  me 
with  Compassion  when  I  declare 
I  am  the  Father  of  this  poor  Girl  the 
Prisoner  at  the  Bar;  nay,  when  I  go 
farther,  and  avow,  that  of  all  my 
Offspring  she  is  my  favourite  Child.' 
He  explains  what  models  he  has  fol- 
lowed, and  then  continues,  *'  I  do  not 
think  my  Child  is  entirely  free  from 
Faults.  I  know  nothing  human  that 
is  so;  but  surely  she  does  not  deserve 
the  Rancour  with  which  she  hath 
been  treated  by  the  Public." 

.  Nor  was  she  (Lady  Mary  Wortley 
Montagu)  a  stranger  to  that  beloved  first 
wife  whose  picture  he  drew  in  his  Amelia, 
where  as  she  said  even  the  glowing  language 
he  knew  how  to  employ  did  not  do  more 
than  justice  to  the  amiable  qualities  of  the 
original  or  to  her  beauty,  although  this  had 
suffered  a  little  from  the  accident  related  in 
the  novel — a  frightful  overturn  which  de- 
stroyed the  gristle  of  her  nose. — Lady 
Louisa  Stuart,  Letters  and  Works  of  Lady 
M.  W.  Montagu  (1837). 

Fielding's  wife,  whether  she  had  "a 
broken  nose"  or  not,  must  have  been  an 
angel.  It  is  she  who  sat  for  Sophia  Western 
and  Amelia  Booth,  the  kindest,  the  dearest, 
the  most  charming  and  lenient  of  women. — 
Andrew  Lang. 

Booth,  Captain,  the  not  too  heroic 
hero  of  Fielding's  novel  Amelia.  He 
is  brave  enough  and  in  a  man-of-the- 
world  way  possesses  even  a  rudimen- 
tary sense  of  honor,  but  he  is  a  prodi- 
gal and  a  profligate  whose  easy  good- 
nature is  held  in  leash  by  none  of  the 
sterner  virtues.  When  first  intro- 
duced he  is  in  prison  for  participation 
in  a  street  quarrel.  He  has  a  mistress 
there.  Miss  Matthews,  a  frail  beauty 
who  has  murdered  her  seducer.  But 
he  is  really  in  love  with  his  wife 
whose  purity,  virtue  and  devotion 
eventually  rescue  him  from  vice  and 
jail.  Fielding  sat  for  his  own  portrait 
in  this  character  and  utilized  many 
of  his  own  experiences,  adventures 
and  misadventures  in  the  story  of  his 
career. 

Amelia,  whose  portrait  Fielding  drew 
from  that  of  his  second  wife,  has  indeed 
been  always  a  favorite  character  with 
readers;  but  the  same  cannot  be  said  about 


Boots 


67 


Bottom 


her  husband  Booth,  who,  we  may  suppose, 
was  meant  to  represent  Fielding  himself. 
If  so  the  likeness  he  drew  is  certainly  not  a 
flattering  one.  Thackeray  preferred  Cap- 
tain Booth  to  Tom  Jones,  because  he 
thought  much  more  humbly  of  himself  than 
Jones  did,  and  went  down  on  his  knees  and 
owned  his  weaknesses,  but  most  will  be 
incHned  to  agree  with  Scott,  who  declares 
that  we  have  not  the  same  sympathy  for  the 
^^  ungrateful  and  dissolute  conduct  of  Booth 

■^  which  we  yield  to  the  youthful  follies  of 

Jones. — H.  J.  Nichol. 

Boots,  an  otherwise  unnamed  char- 
acter in  Dickens's  Christmas  story, 
Boots  at  The  Holly  Tree  Inn^  who  in 
his  own  vernacular  tells  the  story  of 
two  eloping  children. 

Sam  Weller  is  the  great  type  of  this  class, 
and  it  may  be  said  of  him  as  of  his  fellow 
Boots  of  the  Holly  Tree  Inn  that  one  of  the 
greatest  charms  about  them  is  that  we  can- 
not tell  whether  they  are  really  like  or  unlike 
what  living  Boots  could  be.  The  picture  is 
full  of  those  traits  of  keen  personal  observa- 
tion, of  minute  inspection,  of  trifiing  eccen- 
tricities and  peculiarities  which  have  lent 
so  much  life  and  vigor  to  Mr.  Dickens's 
writing.  The  language,  too,  and  the  char- 
acteristic expressions  smack  of  the  trade  and 
of  the  life  to  which  the  Boots  are  supposed 
to  belong.  But  all  this  is  only  a  clothing 
under  which  the  novelist  conceals  himself. 
There  are  no  Sam  Wellers  in  real  life.  The 
Boots  of  a  real  Holly  Tree  Inn,  if  he  uses 
the  phrases  that  his  imaginary  representa- 
tive adopts,  uses  them  sparingly  and  acci- 
dentally. The  Boots  of  the  tale  is  all  Boots 
and  talks  his  language  from  beginning  to 
end.  The  author  is  never  lost  sight  of,  and 
we  feel  that  art  has  collected  together  what 
nature  separates  by  long  intervals,  and  has 
exaggerated  with  a  grotesque  unity  what 
nature  leaves  simple,  undefined  and  in- 
complete.— Saturday  Review,  v,  636. 

Boots,  Bonny,  a  nickname  reap- 
pearing in  various  Elizabethan  ballads 
and  evidently  referring  to  some  court 
favorite.  His  skill  in  dancing  and 
singing  are  specially  noted.  Hence 
he  is  sometimes  identified  with  one 
Hale  or  Hales  whose  singing  is  known 
to  have  pleased  the  Queen,  but  more 
frequently  with  the  Earl  of  Essex, 
whose  courtly  graces  included  these 
accomplishments.  Essex  was  be- 
headed in  February,  1601,  and  in  that 
year  was  published  The  Triumphs  of 
Oriana,  a  collection  of  pieces  in  honor 
of  Elizabeth,  wherein  Bonny  Boots 
is  mourned  as  recently  dead. 

Boots,  Major  Wellington  de,  in 
Stirling  Coyne's  comedy.  Everybody's 
Friend  (1859). 

In  order  to  amplify  the  part  of  the 


Major  for  one  of  its  greatest  expo- 
nents, John  Sleeper  Clarke,  the  play 
was  rewritten  and,  imder  the  title  of 
The  Widow  Hunt,  produced  at  the 
Haymarket  in  1867. 

Borkman,  John  Gabriel,  hero  and 
title  of  a  drama  by  Henrik  Ibsen 
(1896),  "  a  man  of  the  most  energetic 
imagination  whose  illusions  feed  on 
his  misfortunes,  and  whose  concep- 
tion of  his  own  power  grows  hyber- 
bolical  and  Napoleonic  in  his  solitude 
and  impotence."  So  says  George 
Bernard  Shaw  in  Dramatic  Opinions, 
and  the  same  authority  adds  that 
Borkman  "  meets  the  fate  of  a  vehe- 
ment dreamer  who  has  for  thirteen 
years  been  deprived  of  that  daily 
contact  with  reality  and  responsibility 
without  which  genius  inevitably  pro- 
duces unearthliness  and  insanity." 

Bothwell,  Francis  Stewart,  Earl  of, 
known  as  the  Bastard  Earl  (d.  1624), 
appears  in  Scott's  romance.  The  For- 
tunes of  Nigel.  Following  hard  on  the 
heels  of  the  yotmg  king  James  I  when 
fleeing  in  his  night  gear  down  a  turret 
stair,  a  prick  of  the  Earl's  sword  in 
the  nether  extremities  is  said  to  have 
confirmed  His  Majesty's  aversion  to 
cold  steel.  The  incident  has  a  his- 
torical basis. 

Bothwell,  Sergeant,  in  Walter 
Scott's  historical  romance.  Old  Mor- 
tality (18 16),  an  officer  in  Claver- 
house's  regiment  of  Life  Guards  who 
fights  Charles  II.  Francis  Stewart 
is  his  real  name,  but  as  the  illegiti- 
mate descendant  of  the  last  Earl  of 
Bothwell  (himself  known  as  the 
Bastard  Earl)  he  assumes  the  titu- 
lar pseudonym.  Gallant,  licentious, 
boastful,  arrogant,  he  died  at  Dnmie- 
log  "  hoping  nothing,  believing  noth- 
ing and  fearing  nothing." 

Bottom,  Nick,  in  A  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,  a  weaver  full  of  fan- 
tastic vanity,  self-assurance,  impu- 
dence and  ignorance.  The  name  is  a 
weaver's  term  for  a  bobbin  or  spindle 
full  of  yam.     See  Titania. 

Bottom,  In  his  broad-blown  self-impor- 
tance, his  all  but  impenetrable  self-satis- 
faction, stands  a  head  and  shoulders  higher 
in  absurdity  than  any  other  comic  character 
in  Shakespeare's  early  plays.  He  is  the 
admitted  king  of  his  company,  the  cock  of 


Bountiful 


68 


Box  and  Coz 


his  walk — and  he  has  a  consciousness  that 
his  gifts  are  more  than  equal  to  his  oppor- 
tunities. When  the  ass's  head  is  on  his 
shoulders  it  seems  hardly  a  disguise,  so 
naturally  does  the  human-asinine  seem  to 
come  to  Bottom;  he  might  have  been  for 
twelve  months  Titania's  long-eared  lover, 
so  easily  do  his  new  honors  sit  upon  him. — 
E.  DowDEN,  Shakespeare  Primer. 

Bountiful,  Lady,  in  Farquhar's 
comedy,  The  Beaux  Stratagem  (1705), 
the  widow  of  Sir  Charles  Bountiful 
whose  gracious  mood  it  is  to  look 
after  the  sick  in  the  parish  and  relieve 
the  necessities  of  the  deserving  poor. 
As  her  nephew  says  in  Act  i,  Sc.  i, 
"My  Lady  Bountiful  is  one  of  the 
best  of  women.  Her  late  husband, 
Sir  Charles  Bountiful,  left  her  with 
£1000  a  year;  and  I  believe  she  lays 
out  one-half  on't  in  charitable  uses 
for  the  good  of  her  neighbors.  In 
short  she  has  cured  more  people  in 
and  about  Lichfield  within  ten  years 
than  the  doctors  have  killed  in 
twenty,  and  that's  a  bold  word." 

Bourgh,  Lady  Catherine  de,  in  Jane 
Austen's  novel.  Pride  and  Prejudice 
(18 13),  a  great  lady  but  vulgar,  in 
the  way  that  some  great  ladies  can 
be  vulgar.  Insolent,  inquisitive,  over- 
bearing, she  is  properly  set  down  by 
the  witty  Elizabeth  Bennett  in  a 
memorable  scene  in  "  the  prettyish 
kind  of  little  shrubbery  "  where  they 
walk  together. 

Bourke,  Chevalier,  in  R.  L.  Steven- 
son's The  Master  of  Ballantrae. 

It  is  not  very  easy  to  understand  the 
Chevalier  Bourke,  that  Barry  Lyndon,  with 
no  head  and  a  good  heart,  that  creature  of  a 
bewildered,  kindly  conscience;  but  it  is  easy 
to  like  him.  How  admirable  is  his  unde- 
flected  belief  in  and  affection  for  the  Master ! 
How  excellent  and  how  Irish  he  is,  when  he 
buffoons  himself  out  of  his  perils  with  the 
pirates! — Andrew  Lang,  Essays  in  Little. 

Boursoufle,  Comte  de,  hero  of  a 
pretended  posthumous  play  by  Vol- 
taire, produced  in  Paris  in  1862, 
which,  after  fooling  critics  and  public, 
was  discovered  to  be  an  adaptation 
of  Vanbru|;h's  Relapse.  Boursoufle, 
of  course,  is  Lord  Foppington  trans- 
ferred to  the  boulevards. 

Bovary,  Emma,  heroine  of  Madame 
Bovary  (1857),  a  realistic  novel  by 
Gustave  Flaubert.  A  farmer's  daugh- 
ter, married  to  a  village  apothecary. 


but  educated  above  her  station,  she 
seeks  to  relieve  ennui  by  two  suc- 
cessive intrigues,  plunges  hopelessly 
into  debt,  and,  when  her  lovers  refuse 
to  aid  her,  poisons  herself.  Her  de- 
voted husband,  his  eyes  opened  at  last, 
dies  of  grief. 

Emma's  character  is  pitilessly  dis- 
sected. Morally  irresponsible,  she  has 
no  object  in  life  but  self -gratification. 
Her  father's  farm  was  dull  and  she 
left  it;  her  husband's  house  proves  as 
dull;  she  takes  a  vindictive  pleasure 
in  betraying  him.  Her  child  is  but  a 
transient  amusement.  Even  in  her 
love,  when  aroused  at  last,  there  is 
nothing  noble  or  generous. 

Bowling,  Lieutenant,  in  Smollett's 
novel,  Roderick  Random,  the  hero's 
maternal  uncle.  In  him  Smollett 
seized  at  once  and  fixed  forever  the 
eighteenth  century  type  of  seaman — 
rough  as  a  polar  bear,  brave,  simple, 
kindly,  and  out  of  his  element  every- 
where except  afloat.  Bowling  has  left 
his  mark  in  many  a  novel  and  drama 
of  the  sea.  He  carries  the  habit  of 
professional  speech  at  least  as  far  as 
the  limits  of  art  wiU  allow.  Sea  life 
and  war  and  the  hardening  habits 
of  the  service  have  made  him  indif- 
ferent to  that  social  softening  down 
which,  without  amending  hearts,  re- 
fines manners. 

Bowling,  Tom,  hero  and  title  of 
A  Tale  of  the  Sea  (1839),  by  Cap- 
tain Frederick  Chamier,  a  composite 
portrait  drawn  partly  from  Nelson's 
flag-captain  Hardy  and  partly  from 
Richard  Bowen,  captain  of  the  frigate 
Terpsichore,  who  fell  in  the  attack  on 
Santa  Cruz,  July  24,  1797 — 

than  whom  a  more  enterprising,  able  and 
gallant  officer  does  not  grace  his  majesty's 
naval  service. — Nelson's  Dispatches,  11,  423. 

Bows,  Mr.,  in  Thackeray's  novel, 
Pendennis,  a  fiddler  with  a  crippled 
body,  a  lively  imagination,  and  in- 
tense feelings.  He  cherishes  a  far-off 
hopeless  passion  for  Miss  Fotheringay 
whom  he  has  taught  how  to  act,  and 
has  a  paternal  affection  for  Fanny 
Bolton,  his  pupil  in  music. 

Box  and  uox,  the  heroes  of  a  farce 
of  that  name  (1847),  by  J.  Maddison 
Morton,   which,  according  to  F.  C. 


Boynton 


69 


Bradwardine 


Burnand  {London  Times,  October 
1 8,  1889),  is  "  the  best  farce  for  three 
characters  in  the  English  language." 
It  is  founded  upon  a  comedie-vaude- 
ville  by  Lrabiche  and  Lefranc  entitled 
Frisette,  produced  at  the  Palais- 
Royal,  Paris,  April  28,  1846. 

Boynton,  Dr.,  in  William  D. 
Howells's  novel,  The  Undiscovered 
Country  (1880),  a  country  doctor 
who  has  gone  daft  on  spiritual  mani- 
festations. Half  fanatic,  half  self- 
deceiver,  he  has  brought  up  his  daugh- 
ter Egeria,  a  dehcate,  high-strung, 
nervous  girl,  as  a  medium.  Failing 
to  take  Boston  by  storm,  the  pair 
find  refuge  in  a  Shaker  community. 

Dr.  Bojmton  Is  a  fervent  believer  In 
spiritualism — or,  rather,  an  ardent  hankerer 
after  fervent  belief  in  it.  But,  not  being 
exactly  an  idiot,  he  has  observed  the  quack- 
ery which  generally  prevails  on  the  subject, 
and  has  drawn  the  bright  conclusion  that 
a  certain  amount  of  slipperiness  is  insepara- 
ble from  the  mediumistic  temperament.  He 
accordingly  mixes  himself  up  with  some  very 
doubtful  people,  whom  he  allows,  in  his  own 
words,  to  "assist  the  Spirits."  The  spirits 
are  of  course  assisted  to  their  hearts'  con- 
tent, and  when  Dr.  Boynton  finds  out  how 
far  the  assistance  has  gone  he  is  in  a  parox- 
ysm of  rage,  grief,  and  despair,  being  in- 
deed, as  his  confederate  justly  calls  him, 
"  a  new  sort  of  fool."  He  is  always  going 
through  these  alternations  of  eager  belief  in 
having  found  the  clue,  and  of  frantic  dis- 
appointment when  it  fails  him. — Saturday 
Review. 

Boynton,^  Egeria,  the  daughter  of 
the  above. 

Egeria  Boynton  is  an  unhappy  young 
woman,  not  very  brilliant,  who  is  passion- 
ately fond  of  her  father,  and  deeply  dis- 
gusted at  the  charlatanism  which  she  is 
forced  into  partaking;  but  who,  neverthe- 
less, owing  to  filial  affection  and  a  nervous 
temperament,  allows  herself  to  be  mesmer- 
ized and  materialized  or  immaterialized — 
we  really  cannot  undertake  to  use  the  jargon 
correctly — and  thus  to  bamboozle  others,  to 
ruin  her  own  health,  and  to  confirm  her 
father  in  his  self-deluding  folly. — Saturday 
Review, 

Boythom;  Laurence,  in  Dickens' 
novel,  Bleak  House  (1853),  a  friend 
of  Mr.  Jamdyce,  robust-minded, 
loud-yoicedj  self-assertive,  combative, 
but  intrinsically  noble,  kindly  and 
affectionate.  The  character  was  gen- 
erally recognized  as  a  study  of  the 
external    traits    of    Walter    Savage 


Lander,  and  was  good-naturedly 
accepted  as  such  by  Landor  himself. 

The  chivalry,  the  sincerity,  the  vehe- 
mence, the  extravagance,  the  grace  of 
manner,  the  boisterous  laughter,  the  childish 
love  of  pets — every  salient  trait  of  Landor 
in  the  spirit  or  the  flesh  is  reproduced  in 
this  life-like  study.  The  tendency  to  exag- 
gerate the  expression  of  every  momentary 
impulse,  which  is  such  a  humorous  feature 
in  this  character,  must  be  taken  into  account 
in  any  judgment  passed  upon  the  failings  of 
his  prototype  .  .  .  His  worst  exhibi- 
tions of  temper,  like  those  of  a  child,  gen- 
erally, excite  too  much  laughter  to  leave 
room  for  anger. — The  Contemporary  Review. 

Bracegirdle,    Anne     (1674-1748), 

one  of  the  most  famous  of  English 
actresses,  figures  imder  her  own  name 
in  John  Oxenford's  Tragedy  Queen, 
and  is  the  supposed  original  of  two 
stage  characters  which  she  "created" 
— Angelica  in  Congreve's  Love  for  Love 
and  Lavinia  in  Rowe's  Fair  Penitent, 

It  was  even  the  fashion  for  the  gay  and 
young  to  have  a  taste  or  tendre  for  Mrs. 
Bracegirdle.  She  inspired  the  best  authors 
to  write  for  her  and  two  of  these  (Rowe  and 
Congreve),  when  they  gave  her  a  lover  in 
the  play,  seemed  palpably  to  plead  their 
own  passion  and  make  their  private  court 
to  her  in  fictitious  characters. — Colley 
Gibber,  Apology. 

Bradwardine,  Baron  of,  in  Thack- 
eray's Book  of  Snobs,  ii.  He  is  de- 
scribed as  "  the  most  famous  man 
in  Haggisland  "  and  an  admirer  of 
Georgius  IV  who,  "  coming  on  board 
the  royal  yacht  and  finding  a  glass 
out  of  which  Georgius  had  drunk,  put 
it  into  his  coat  pocket  as  an  inestima- 
ble reHc  and  went  ashore  in  his  boat 
again.  But  the  Baron  sat  down  upon 
the  glass  and  broke  it,  cut  his  coat- 
tails  very  much,  and  the  inestimable 
relic  was  lost  to  the  world  forever.'* 
The  Baron  is  meant,  of  coiu-se,  for 
Sir  Walter  Scott  and  the  story  is 
retold  in  Thackeray's  lecture  on 
George  IV  with  proper  credit. 

Bradwardine,  Cosmo  Comyne, 
Baron  of,  in  the  romance,  Waverley 
(18 14),  one  of  Scott's  most  successful 
comic  characters,  "the  very  model 
of  the  old  Scottish  cavalier,"  says  the 
author,"  with  all  his  excellencies  and 
peculiarities."  He  is  a  scholar,  of 
the  Scotch  pedantic  sort;  fuU  of 
anecdotes,    almost    always    curious 


Braggadochio 


70 


Brand 


and  informing,  yet  whimsical  from 
prejudice  and  pedantry;  and  full  also 
of  the  pride  of  race  and  position. 

Bradwardine's  prototype  was  Alexander 
Stewart  of  Invernahyle,  on  whose  valour  and 
magnanimity  at  Preston-pans  the  plot  of 
Waverley  is  made  to  turn.  To  Invernahyle 
Scott  owed  much  of  his  knowledge  of  High- 
land life  and  scenery.  He  was  "that  friend 
of  my  childhood  who  first  introduced  me  to 
the  Highlands,  their  traditions  and  manners, 
"and  whose  visits  to  Scott's  household 
brought  delight  to  his  children  in  later  life." 
To  this  picturesque  figure  fighting  his  battles 
over  again  with  all  the  garrulousness  of  a 
veteran  campaigner,  "much  of  the  inspira- 
tion of  Waverley  was  no  doubt  due." 
"Inverness  had  been  out  with  Marr  and 
with  Charlie."  He  died  at  an  advanced  age 
In  1795'  But  there  were  features  in  Brad- 
wardine — such  as  his  scholarship  and 
pedantry — which  Invernahyle  did  not  pos- 
Bess,  and  these  seem  to  have  been  borrowed 
from  Lord  Forbes  of  Pitsligo  (1678-1762), 
"patriot,  outlaw,  scholar,  saint"  who  at  the 
age  of  6s  took  active  part  in  the  Jacobite 
rising  of  1745. — See  Crcx;kett,  The  Scott 
Originals. 

What  could  be  more  delightful,  more 
loving  in  its  fun,  more  whimsical  in  its 
quaint  conception,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
more  completely  true  to  nature,  than  the 
Baron  of  Bradwardine,  a  knight  and  gentle- 
man every  inch  of  him — with  his  wisdom, 
his  learning,  his  vanity,  and  gravest  solemn 
foolishness?  "I  had  a  great  deal  of  fun  in 
the  accomplishment  of  this  task,"  says  Scott, 
with  the  gleam  of  enjoyment  in  his  eyes. 
He,  too,  liked  it  as  much  as  his  audience. 
To  him,  as  to  every  true  humorist,  his  Baron 
was  dear — there  is  moisture  beyond  the 
laughter  in  his  eye,  rising  half  from  the 
heartiness  of  the  laugh,  half  from  a  tender 
aflfection  below. — Blackwood's  Magazine, 
August,  1871. 

Braggadochio  (which  orthographi- 
cally  is  Spenser's  attempt  to  trans- 
literate the  Italian  braggadoccio) ,  in 
the  Faerie  Queene,  an  empty  boaster 
who  succeds  for  a  period  in  making 
his  way  by  sheer  bluff,  but  is  even- 
tually exposed  and  stripped  of  his 
borrowed  plumes.  His  early  career 
is  related  m  Book  iii,  8  and  10;  his 
downfall  occurs  in  v,  3.  A  caricature 
of  Philip  II  of  Spain  may  be  intended; 
but  in  a  more  general  way  Bragga- 
dochio, like  Ariosto's  Rodomont,  is  a 
satire  on  intemperance  of  speech  and 
is  to  some  extent  reminiscent  of  the 
earUer  character. 

Brainworm,  in  Ben  Jonson's  Every 
Man  in  his  Humor  (1598),  a  servant 
to  Ola  Knowell,  whose  versatility 
and    adaptiveness    enabled    him    to 


appear  in  various  disguises  imder  as 
many  aliases. 

B  rainworm  Is  a  particularly  dry  and 
abstruse  character.  We  neither  know  his 
business  nor  his  motives;  his  plots  are  as 
intricate  as  they  are  useless,  and  the  igno- 
rance of  those  he  imposes  upon  is  wonderful. 
This  is  the  impression  in  reading  it.  Yet 
from  the  bustle  and  activity  of  this  charac- 
ter on  the  stage,  the  changes  of  dress,  the 
variety  of  affected  tones  and  gypsy  jargon, 
and  the  limping,  distorted  gestures  it  is  a 
very  amusing  exhibition. — 'WILLIAM  Haz- 
LITT. 

Bramble,  Matthew,  a  testy  but 
kindly  valetudinarian,  a  sort  of 
Roderick  Random  grown  old  and 
much  improved  by  age,  who  is  the 
projector  of  the  family  tour  described 
in  the  (misnamed)  Expedition  of 
Humphrey  Clinker  (1771),  a  novel 
by  Tobias  Smollett.  Not  untU  one- 
fourth  of  the  journey  has  been  ac- 
complished is  Htmiphrey  Clinker 
taken  on  as  a  postilion — Bramble 
being  himself  the  chief  character  in 
the  book.  He  takes  with  him  his 
spinster  sister  ^  Tabitha,  her  maid 
Winifred  Jenkins,  and  the  party 
enjoys  or  suffers  a  series  of  comic 
adventures  and  misadventures  not 
dissimilar  to  those  that  had  already 
been  described  in  Christopher  An- 
stey's  New  Bath  Guide. 

Brand,  the  hero  of  Ibsen's  drama 
of  that  name  (1866),  a  peasant  priest 
who  from  his  rural  parsonage — 
perched  midway  between  the  preci- 
pice and  the  fjord — hurls  defiance 
against  the  world  and  its  prejudices, 
conventions,  time-serving  and  hypoc- 
risies. Perhaps  he  hardly  knows  what 
he  wants  save  that  it  must  be  a  total 
upheaval  of  present  conditions  that 
shall  bring  men  closer  to  God.  An 
avalanche  brought  down  upon  him 
by  his  own  wrath  finally  buries  him 
in  the  ruins  of  the  Ice-church. 
"  Brand  is  myself  in  my  best  mo- 
ments," wrote  Ibsen.  Nevertheless 
other  Hke-minded  men  undoubtedly 
furnished  hints  for  this  character, 
notably  Pastor  Gustav  Adolf  Lam- 
mers,  who  dwelt  in  the  parish  of 
Skien  until  his  troubled  and  rebellious 
mind  forced  him  to  give  up  his  flock 
and  found  the  Free  Apostolic  Chris- 
tian Commimion,  and  the  eminent 


Brand  71 


Brangtons 


Danish   philosopher,    Soren    Kierke- 
gaard (1813-1855). 

The  difference  between  these  two  proto- 
types of  Brand  was  largely  a  matter  of  exter- 
nal estimate  on  the  part  of  Ibsen.  Lammers 
was  not  a  closet  philosopher,  whereas 
Kierkegaard  was,  and  therefore,  should 
people  absolutely  need  to  have  a  model  for 
Brand,  they  had  best  take  the  former. — 
Montrose  J.  Moses,  Henrik  Ibsen,  p.  168. 

Brand,  Agnes,  sister  of  the  above. 
She  is  supposed  to  have  been  drawn 
from  Thea  Brunn,  whom  Ibsen  met 
in  1864  with  her  widowed  mother, 
Frau  Lina  Brunn.  Thea  was  a  sensi- 
tive, self-sacrificing  person  who  even- 
tually died  as  a  result  of  nervous 
strain  attendant  upon  the  death  of 
her  brothers. 

External  interpretation  always  irritated 
Ibsen.  When  Laura  Kieler,  the  authoress, 
sent  him  her  novel,  Brand's  Daughters,  in 
which  Brand's  teachings  were  applied  prac- 
tically to  life,  wearied  with  so  much  dis- 
cussion, Ibsen  wrote  to  her  from  Dresden  in 
June,  1870,  that  his  poem  was  an  aesthetic 
work  and  not  a  system  of  philosophy.  He 
had  experienced,  not  only  observed,  the 
things  he  treated  of;  and,  impelled  by  an 
overpowering  necessity  of  putting  his 
thoughts  into  form,  he  had  done  so;  now  he 
cared  not  whether  his  book  demolished  or 
built  up. — Montrose  J.  Moses,  Henrik 
Ibsen,  p.  201. 

Brand,  Ethan,  hero  and  title  of  a 
tale  in  N.  Hawthorne's  Mosses  from 
an  Old  Manse  (1846). 

He  was  then  (1840)  beginning  to  revolve 
one  of  the  two  great  romance  themes  that 
preoccupied  his  whole  after-life,  neither  of 
which  was  he  destined  to  write.  This  was 
the  idea  of  the  Unpardonable  Sin;  the  other 
was  the  conception  of  the  Deathless  Man. 
The  only  essay  we  have  towards  the  embodi- 
ment of  the  first  vision  is  the  short  fragment 
published  in  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse, 
called  Ethan  Brand.  The  other  was 
attempted  in  various  forms,  of  which  Sep- 
timius.  Dr.  Grimshawe's  Secret,  and  The 
Dolliver  Romance,  all  posthumously  pub- 
lished, are  the  most  important. — Julian 
Hawthorne,  Hawthorne  and  His  Circle. 

Brandon,  "William,  in  Bulwer- 
Lytton's  Paul  Clifford  (1830),  the 
father  of  the  eponymic  hero.  See 
Clifford,  Paul. 

William  Brandon  is  the  lawyer  who 
always  plays  an  important  part  in  melo- 
dramatic fiction.  Directly  we  are  intro- 
duced to  him  and  find  that  he  has  an  icy 
smile,  a  serpent  eye — that  his  features  are 
."steeped  in  sarcasm,'!  that  be  is  usually 


cold  and  self-possessed,  but  that  he  some- 
times walks  about  his  room  at  night  and 
mutters  "Ha! — I  have  it — yet  methinks, 
'twere  well; — but — but — this  is  weakness" 
— we  know  perfectly  well  what  is  coming: 
we  see  as  in  a  glass,  that  he  has  committed 
a  great  crime,  and  that  he  is  secretly  tor- 
tured by  remorse;  we  are  sure  that  he  is 
laying  plans  that  will  come  to  nothing,  and 
that  he  is  destined  to  an  untimely  end.— 
Westminster  Review,  March,  1865. 

Brangtons,  The,  in  Fanny  Bumey's 
novel,  Evelina,  a  set  of  vulgar  cousins 
related  to  the  heroine  through  Mme. 
Duval  (q.v.),  who  compromise  her 
position  in  the  finer  world  to  which 
she  by  instinct  and  breeding  belongs. 
Though  horribly  ashamed  of  them, 
they  remain  all  unconscious  of  her 
shame,  for  she  is  incapable  of  wound- 
ing them  even  to  free  herself  from 
torment. 

The  family  consists  of  a  father — 
Madame  Duval's  nephew — a  silver- 
smith on  Snow  Hill,  a  man  of  fair 
but  cockneyfied  intelligence  who 
despises  everybody  not  bom  and 
bred  in  London.  His  son  Thomas  is 
"  weaker  in  his  imderstanding  and 
more  gay  in  his  temper,  but  his 
gaiety  is  that  of  a  foolish,  overgrown 
schoolboy  whose  mirth  consists  in 
noise  and  disturbance."  He  disdains 
his  father  and  ridicules  his  sisters, 
who  despise  him  in  return.  The  elder 
daughter.  Miss  Biddy,  is  not  ill-look- 
ing, but  proud,  ill-tempered,  and  con- 
ceited. "  She  hates  the  city  though 
without  knowing  why,  for  it  is  easy 
to  discover  she  has  lived  nowhere 
else."  The  younger  sister,  Polly,  is 
"  rather  pretty,  very  foolish,  very 
ignorant,  very  giddy  and  very  good- 
natured."  This  family,  after  the 
fashion  of  eighteenth  century  trades- 
people, live  over  their  shop  in  the  city 
and  rent  some  of  the  rooms.  Poor 
Evelma,  after  she  has  been  pestered 
with  the  attentions  of  the  under- 
bred Mr.  Smith,  and  threatened  by 
Madame  Duval  with  young  Brangton 
as  a  husband,  reaches  the  full  measure 
of  her  mortifications  at  Kensington 
Gardens,  where  in  a  soaking  shower 
her  cousins  contrive  to  borrow  Lord 
Orville's  coach  in  her  name,  although 
against  her  will.  As  a  result  the 
coach  is  badly  injured  in  taking  these 


Brass 


72 


Breitmann 


discreditable  connections  to  Snow 
HiU. 

Brass,  Miss  Sally,  in  Dickens's  The 
Old  Curiosity  Shop,  sister  and  partner 
of  Sampson,  who  shares  his  evil  traits 
and  physically  is  his  counterpart  in 
petticoats. 

Brass,  Sampson,  brother  of  the 
above,  a  vulgar,  unscrupulous,  untidy 
and  servile  attorney. 

Brassbound,  Captain,  hero  of  G.  B. 
Shaw's  comedy,  Captain  Brass- 
bound's  Conversion,  an  impossible 
pirate  in  an  imaginary  Morocco, 
boimd  on  a  mission  of  private  punish- 
ment which  appears  to  him  a  God- 
given  duty,  and  apparently  invented 
for  the  purpose  of  emphasizing  the 
idiosyncrasies  of  the  heroine,  Lady 
Cicely  Waynefleet  (g.o.)* 

The  pirate  Brassbound  orders  his  life 
upon  the  principle  that,  as  Bacon  puts  it, 
"revenge  is  a  sort  of  wild  justice."  He  is 
imbued  with  mediaeval  concepts  of  right 
and  wrong.  In  opposition  to  him  he  dis- 
covers his  opposite, — a  cool,  tactful,  un- 
sentimental woman  of  the  world,  disarming 
all  opposition  through  her  Tolstoyism. 
With  sympathetic  interest  she  soon  wins 
from  Brassbound  the  secret  of  his  life,  and 
with  quiet  and  delicious  satire,  opens  his 
eyes  to  the  pettiness  of  his  mock-heroics, 
the  absurdity  of  the  melodramatic  point  of 
view — the  code  of  the  Kentucky  feud,  the 
Italian  vendetta.  The  revulsion  in  Brass- 
bound  is  instant  and  complete. — Archibald 
Henderson,  George  Bernard  Shaw,  p.  324. 

Brattle,  Carry,  in  Anthony  Trol- 
lope's  novel,  The  Vicar  of  Bull- 
hampton. 

We  gather  from  the  preface  that  Mr. 
TroUope  has  a  moral  design  in  his  book. 
*'I  have  introduced  in  The  Vicar  of  Bull- 
hampton  the  character  of  a  girl  whom  I  will 
call-y-for  want  of  a  truer  word  that  shall 
not  in  its  truth  be  offensive — a  castaway. 
I  have  endeavoured  to  endow  her  with 
qualities  that  may  create  sympathy,  and  I 
have  brought  her  back  at  last  from  degrada- 
tion at  least  to  decency."  In  the  pursuit 
of  his  aim  Mr.  TroUope  cannot  be  re- 
proached with  making  vice  attractive.  He 
tells  us  that  Carry  is  pretty  and  that  a 
certain  early  charm  had  won  the  good  will 
of  the  vicar  and  his  wife;  but  a  less  taking 
wrongdoer  seldom  demands  our  pity.  We 
suppose  she  was  led  astray  at  first  by  her 
afifections,  though  we  are  not  told  so,  but 
her  cool  indifference  whether  the  man  she 
is  afterwards  engaged  to  is  hanged  or  not 
shows  that  they  were  well  under  control  by 
the  end  of  the  story.  And  her  father  and 
brother,  who  share  the  vicar's  regard,  are 
as  sour  a  pair  as  we  ever  knew  time  spent 


upon.  Old  Brattle  is  perhaps  the  best 
character  as  a  work  of  art,  the  writer's 
mind  has  been  most  present  in  him;  but  no 
clownish  rustic  of  fiction  was  ever  a  more 
ungracious  piece  of  realism. — Saturday 
Review. 

Breck,  Alan,  more  properly  Alan 
Breck  Stewart,  the  most  picturesque 
and  forceful  character  in  R.  L.  Steven- 
son's romances,  Kidnapped  (1886), 
and  its  sequel,  David  Balfour  (1893). 

As  to  Alan  Breck,  with  his  valor  and 
vanity,  his  good  heart,  his  good  conceit  of 
himself,  his  fantastic  loyalty,  he  is  abso- 
lutely worthy  of  the  hand  that  drew  Galium 
Beg  and  the  Dougal  creature. — Andrew 
Lang,  Essays  in  Little. 

Breen,  Grace,  heroine  of  Ho  wells 's 
novel.  Dr.  Breen' s  Practice  (188 1). 
Having  had  an  imfortunate  love 
affair,  in  which  she  had  been  badly 
treated  by  her  lover,  she  has  adopted 
the  practice  of  medicine  much  as 
other  women  enter  convents  or  go 
out  as  missionaries. 

Dr.  Breen  .  .  .  represents  what  Mr. 
Howells  seems  to  think  the  modern  form 
of  Puritanism,  this  ancient  faith  taking  in 
her  a  moral  rather  than  a  religious  form,  and 
making  her  conscience  sensitive  as  regards 
all  her  relations  with  fellow  creatures  to  a 
degree  unknown  in  parts  of  the  world 
unaffected  by  Puritan  traditions. — N.  Y. 
Nation. 

Breitmann,  Hans,  hero  of  the 
Breitmann  Ballads  by  Charles  God- 
frey Leland,  first  collected  into  book 
form  in  1868.  He  is  a  genial  carica- 
ture of  the  German  immigrant  in 
Pennsylvania,  drunk  with  the  new 
world  as  with  new  wine,  and  rioting 
in  the  expression  of  purely  Deutsch 
nature  and  half-Deutsch  ideas 
through  the  broken  English  of  the 
half-Americanized  German  fellow 
citizen.  He  made  his  first  appearance 
in  Hans  Breitmann' s  Party  in  1856. 

Breitmann  is  one  of  the  battered  types  of 
the  men  of  '48 — a  person  whose  education 
more  than  his  heart  has  in  every  way  led 
him  to  entire  scepticism  or  indifference,  and 
one  whose  Lutheranism  does  not  go  beyond 
Wein,  Weib  und  Gesang.  Beneath  his 
unlimited  faith  in  pleasure  lie  natural 
shrewdness,  an  excellent  early  education, 
and  certain  principles  of  honesty  and  good 
fellowship,  which  are  all  the  more  clearly 
defined  from  his  moral  looseness  in  details 
identified  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind  with 
total  depravity. — Author's  Preface  to  the 
English  edition,  1871. 


Brent 


73 


Bridge  of  Sighs 


Brent,  John,  titvdar  hero  of  a  novel 
(1862)  by  Theodore  Winthrop.  A 
generous,  noble-minded  man  of  ad- 
venturous disposition,  he  accompa- 
nies Richard  Wade,  an  imsuccessful 
gold  miner  in  California,  on  a  ride 
across  the  plains  to  his  family  in  the 
east. 

Brentford,  Two  Kings  of,  a  couple 
of  biu-lesque  monarchs  introduced 
into  The  Rehearsal  (1671),  a  famous 
farce  written  by  George  Villiers,  Duke 
of  Buckingham,  with  the  assistance 
of  Butler  Sprat  and  others  (see 
Bayes).  They  are  represented  as 
inseparable;  as  dancing  or  singing 
together;  walking  hand  in  hand,  and 
generally  as  Hving  on  terms  of  the 
greatest  affection  and  intimacy. 
Bayes  (Act  i,  Sc.  i)  explains:  "  Look 
you,  sirs,  the  chief  hinge  of  this  play 
.  .  .  is  that  I  suppose  two  langs 
at  Brentford,  for  I  love  to  write 
familiarly."  A  certain  Colonel  Henry 
Howard  wrote  a  play.  The  United 
Kingdom,  which  had  two  kings  in  it. 
Though  it  failed  on  the  stage  and  was 
never  printed,  Buckingham  is  sup- 
posed to  have  had  this  drama  in  mind 
when  he  set  up  two  kings  in  Brentford. 
A  more  likely  theory  is  that  they 
are  caricatures  of  Boabdelin  and 
Abdalla,  the  two  contending  kings  in 
Dryden's  tragedy,  The  Conquest  of 
Granada. 

Bretherton,  Isabel,  the  heroine  of 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward's  first  novel. 
Miss  Bretherton  (1884),  is  obviously 
drawn  from  Mary  Aiiderson,  the 
American  actress,  who  had  recently 
taken  London  by  storm,  yet  failed  to 
satisfy  the  critics.  The  motif  under- 
lying the  story  is  the  insufficiency  of 
natural  gifts,  and  the  fatal  conse- 
quences of  the  world's  too  easy  ac- 
ceptance of  them.  Mrs.  Ward  vir- 
tually asks :  How  shall  an  exceptional 
nature  endowment  of  physical  per- 
fection, with  no  inheritance  of  culti- 
vation from  the  past,  no  acciunula- 
tion  of  personal  thought  and  experi- 
ence, reach  the  heights  of  artistic 
excellence?    Will  Undine  find  a  soul? 

Brewster,  Margaret,  heroine  of 
Whittier's  poem,  In  the  Old  South 
Church  (1878).    The  poet  has  closely 


followed  historical  fact.  Margaret 
Brewster  was  a  Quaker  enthusiast 
who  one  Simday  in  July,  1677,  ap- 
peared before  the  Puritan  congrega- 
tion of  Old  South  Meeting  House  in 
Boston  clad  only  in  a  sackcloth  gown, 
her  head  ash-besprinkled,  her  hair 
dishevelled,  her  face  besmeared  with 
soot.  Judge  Sewall,  an  eyewitness, 
tells  us  that  this  apparition  "  occa- 
sioned the  greatest  and  most  amazing 
uproar  that  ever  I  saw."  Margaret 
was  seized  and  sentenced  to  be 
whipped  at  the  cart's  tail  up  and 
down  the  town. 

Brick,  Jefferson,  in  Dickens's 
Martin  Chuzzlewit,  the  War  Corre- 
spondent of  the  Rowdy  Journal.  A 
small  gentleman,  very  juvenile  in 
appearance,  snub-nosed,  and  of  an 
unwholesome  pallor.  He  and  his 
employer  are  quite  sure  tiiat  Europe 
trembles  at  his  name. 

Jefferson  Brick,  the"  American^ editor, 
twitted  me  with  the  multifarious  patented 
anomalies  of  overgrown,  worthless  Dukes, 
Bishops  of  Durham,  etc.,  which  poor 
English  society  at  present  labors  under,  and 
Is  made  a  solecism  by. — Carlyle. 

Bridge  of  Sighs  (It.,  Ponte~dei 
Sospiri),  the  popular  name  for  a 
picturesque  bridge  in  Venice  which 
spans  the  Rio  canal  and  connects  the 
court-room  in  the  Doge's  palace 
with  the  state  prisons.  Prisoners 
have  to  pass  over  it  on  their  way  to 
and  from  the  hall  of  judgment.  As 
Mr.  Howells  say^,  the  name  arose 
from  "  that  opulence  of  compassion 
which  enables  the  Italians  to  pity 
even  rascality  in  difficulties."^  No 
reaUy  romantic  episode  in  the  history 
of  Venice  can  be  associated  with  it 
(except  the  story  of  Antonio  Fos- 
carini),  for  it  was  not  built  imtil  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth  centuryl  and  the 
criminals  who  have  passed  across  it 
have  been  almost  exclusively  mur- 
derers and  thieves  and  other  mem- 
bers of  the  proletariat  of  crime.  Yet 
Byron  himself  was  deluded  into  adopt- 
ing and  promulgating  this  pathetic 
fallacy  in  the  lines  in  Childe  Harold: 

I  stood  in  Venice  on  the  Bridge  of  Sighs, 
A  prison  and  a  palace  on  each  hand. 


Bridlegoose 


74 


Brobdingnag 


Hood  borrowed  the  name  and  be- 
stowed it  on  London  Bridge  in  his 
poem,  The  Bridge  of  Sighs.  For  that 
London  Bridge  as  the  "  jimiping  off 
place"  for  suicides  was  in  Hood's 
mind  is  highly  probable.  An  old 
London  proverb  ran:  "  London 
Bridge  was  made  for  wise  men  to  go 
over  and  fools  to  go  imder."  Never- 
theless Walter  Thornbury,  in  his 
Haunted  London,  thinks  Waterloo 
Bridge  was  the  place  intended,  and 
he  had  consulted  the  younger  Tom 
Hood. 

Bridlegoose,  Judge,  the  name 
under  which  the  translators  of  Rabe- 
lais's  PantagrtceL  English  the  name 
Brid'oison. 

Bridoison,  Taiel  de,  familiarly 
known  as  Juge  Bridoie,  in  Rabelais's 
satirical  romance  Pantagrtiel,  iii,  39 
(1545)1  a  judicial  luminary  who  de- 
cided all  cases  that  came  before  him 
by  throwing  a  couple  of  dice.  Noth- 
ing can  be  more  naive  than  his  self- 
satisfied  explanation  that  this  is  the 
best  way  of  getting  through  the  calen- 
dar. In  this  character  Rabelais  is 
said  to  have  caricatured  Gmllaiune 
Poyet  (1474-1548)  Chancellor  of 
France  imder  Francis  I. 

Brid'oison,  Judge,  in  Beatmiarch- 
ais*  comedy  The  Marriage  of  Figaro 
(1784),  an  absurd  jurist  imitated 
from  the  famous  character  in  Panta- 
grtiel, who  loves  formality  and  red 
tape  and  hides  his  ignorance  of  the 
spirit  of  the  law  by  clinging  desper- 
ately to  the  letter. 

Brierly,  Bob,  hero  of  Tom  Taylor's 
comedy,  The  Ticket  of  Leave  Man 
(1863),  which  embodies  the  misfor- 
tunes of  a  yoimg  EngUsh  rustic.  Fall- 
ing into  bad  company  he  imwittingly 
circulates  a  forged  note  and  is  trans- 
ported. He  leaves  Portland  by 
virtue  of  a  ticket  of  leave.  In  vain 
he  tries  to  begin  hfe  again.  At  last 
he  is  Idlled  in  a  struggle  with  a  burglar 
against  whom  he  would  protect  the 
property  of  a  city  gentleman  from 
whose  service  he  had  been  dismissed, 
not  for  any  fault,  but  simply  on 
account  of  his  imforttmate  antece- 
dents. 

Brigard,  Gilberte,  the  heroine  of 


Frou-frou,  a  drama  by  Meilhac  and 
Hal^vy,  who  receives  the  titular 
nickname  from  the  perpetual  rust- 
Hng  of  her  silk  dresses.  See  Frou- 
Frou. 

Briggs,  Mr.,  a  blimdering  amateur 
sportsman,  the  artistic  conception  of 
John  Leech,  whose  misadventures 
with  rod  and  gun  and  horse  and 
hounds  were  depicted  serially  in  the 
London  Punch  and  kept  all  England 
laughing  for  years.  Of  Leech  hmaself 
it  is  told  that  he  was  an  ardent  rather 
than  a  successful  sportsman,  and  had 
so  little  confidence  in  his  horseman- 
ship that  he  once  insisted  on  buy- 
ing a  broken-winded  horse  because  it 
was  sure  not  to  carry  him  far  if  it 
bolted. 

Britomart,  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene  (1590),  the  representative  of 
chastity,  to  whom  Book  iii  is  largely 
devoted.  Daughter  of  King  Ryence 
of  Wales,  she  fell  in  love  with  Sir 
Artegal,  whose  features  she  saw  re- 
flected while  gazing  into  a  magic 
mirror.  With  Glauce,  her  nurse,  she 
starts  out  fully  armored  in  search  of 
him.  Her  adventures  allegorize  the 
triimiphs  of  chastity  over  tempta- 
tion. Malacasta  (lust),  not  knowing 
her  sex,  tried  to  seduce  her  in  Castle 
Joyous,  but  she  fled  from  that  palace 
of  luxury:  Marinel  forbade  her  to 
pass  his  cave  but  she  knocked  him 
over  with  one  blow  from  her  spear. 
In  her  next  appearance  as  the  Squire 
of  Dames  she  does  great  deeds  for 
ladies  in  distress,  capping  them  with 
the  deliverance  of  Amoret  (wifely 
love)  from  the  enchanter  Busirane. 
In  Book  V,  6,  she  meets  Sir  Artegal, 
and  after  tilting  with  him  discloses 
herself  for  a  woman;  he,  removing 
his  helmet,  is  instantly  recognized 
by  her  as  the  object  of  her  long 
search. 

Brobdingnag  (usually  misspelled 
Brobdignag),  an  imaginary  country 
described  in  Swift's  Gulliver's  Travels, 
inhabited  by  giants  "  as  tall  as  an 
ordinary  steeple "  who  are  both 
amused  and  amazed  by  the  insignifi- 
cant stature  of  Lemuel  Gulliver  and 
by  the  account  he  gives  them  of  his 
own  country. 


Brook 


75 


Brown 


Brook,  Master,  in  Shakespeare's 
comedy,  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor 
(1601),  the  name  assumed  by  Ford 
when  Sir  John  Falstaff  lays  siege  to 
his  wife  in  order  the  better  to  turn 
the  tables  on  the  fat  knight.  In  the 
Folio  of  1623  the  assumed  name  is 
Broome  and  not  Brook.     See  Ford. 

Brooke,  Celia,  in  George  EHot's 
novel,  Middlemarch  (i 871-1872),  a 
sort  of  foil  to  her  superior  sister 
Dorothea.  The  latter  says  of  her 
that  she  never  did  anything  naughty 
since  she  was  bom,  and  she  really 
never  goes  contrary  to  the  normal 
sense  of  what  is  amiable  and  dutiful 
in  woman.  Less  clever  than  Doro- 
thea, she  has  more  worldy  wisdom; 
not  feeling  it  her  duty  to' reform  or 
subvert  the  world,  she  can  take  her 
place  in  it  naturally.  Serenely  happy 
in  a  happy  home  she  does  her  best 
to  help  and  alleviate  the  suffering 
within  her  reach. 

Brooke,  Dorothea,  the  principal 
female  character  in  George  Eliot's 
Middlemarch  (i 871-1872) — a  sort  of 
modem  St.  Theresa  lost  in  a  provin- 
cial environment,  feeling  out  vaguely 
for  some  worthy  outlet  of  her  energies, 
aspiring  to  reform  the  world  but 
quite  ignorant  of  the  means,  idealizing 
the  bloodless  pedant  Casaubon  and 
marrying  him  only  to  wake  to  bitter 
delusion,  and  putting  up  at  last  with 
the  gay  trifler.  Will  Ladislaw,  whom 
she  marries  after  Casaubon's  death. 

Dorothea,  brought  up  with  Mr.  Brooke 
in  place  of  a  parent,  is  to  be  a  Theresa 
struggling  under  "dim  lights  and  entangled 
circumstances."  She  is  related,  of  course, 
both  to  Maggie  and  to  Romola,  though  she 
is  not  in  danger  of  absolute  asphyxiation  in 
a  dense  bucolic  atmosphere,  or  of  martyr- 
dom in  the  violent  struggles  of  hostile 
creeds.  Her  danger  is  rather  that  of  being 
too  easily  acclimatised  in  a  comfortable 
state  of  things,  where  there  is  sufficient 
cultivation  and  no  particular  demand  for 
St.  Theresas. — Leslie  Stephen,  George 
Eliot. 

She  is  described  as  a  shortsighted  girl, 
disliking  lapdogs,  but  fond  of  a  horse;  with 
beautiful  profile,  beautiful  bearing,  and 
particularly  beautiful  and  frequently  un- 
gloved hands;  with  perfect  sincerity  of 
delight,  and  as  perfect  straightforwardness 
And  transparency  of  expression,  though  she 
cannot  always  make  others  understand  her. 
—Quarterly  Review. 


Brooke,  Squire,  in  George  Eliot's 
novel,  Middlemarch  (1873),  the  bache- 
lor uncle.  Squire  of  Tipton  Grange 
in  Loamshire,  with  whom  CeUa  and 
Dorothea  reside.  He  is  described  as 
"  a  man  of  nearly  sixty,  of  acquies- 
cent temper,  miscellaneous  opinions, 
and  uncertain  vote."  His  conversa- 
tion is  of  the  same  miscellaneous 
character  as  his  opinions.  The 
**  scrappy  slovenliness  "  with  which 
he  jerks  out  his  disjointed  talk  is 
highly  comical.  He  indulges  a  good- 
humored  illusion  that  he  is  a  kind  of 
undeveloped  universal  genius,  a 
Crichton  in  posse  who  could  have 
beaten  his  listeners  at  their  own 
favorite  weapons  if  he  had  cared  to 
take  the  pains.  Indeed  his  natural 
zeal  for  knowledge  would  have 
"  carried  him  over  the  hedge,"  as  he 
observes,  "  but  I  saw  it  wouldn't 
do  —  I  pulled  up;  I  pulled  up  in 
time." 

Browdie,  John,  in  Dickens's  novel, 
Nicholas  Nickleby  (1838),  a  York- 
shire com  factor,  a  big,  brawny, 
brusque  but  kindly  man,  talking  the 
local  dialect  with  a  quaint  infusion 
of  his  own  verbal  idiosyncrasies. 
When  Nicholas  meets  him  he^  is 
courting  his  futiire  wife,  'Tilda  Price, 
and  he  blurts  out  his  uncalled  for 
jealousy  toward  the  spruce  newcomer 
in  noisy  fashion.  Once  pacified,  he 
is  transformed  into  an  exuberant 
friend  of  both  Nickeby  and  Smike, 
and  co-operates  with  the  former  in 
breaking  up  Dotheboys  Hall.  The 
original  of  this  character  is  said  to 
have  been  John  S.  Broodie,  of  Brood- 
iswood,  in  Yorkshire,  to  whom  Dick- 
ens bore  a  letter  of  introduction  when 
he  was  getting  local  color  for  his 
novel.  There  is  some  kinship  be- 
tween Dickens's  Browdie  and  Scott's 
Dandie  Dinmont,  which  may  not  be 
altogether  accidental. 

Brown,  Jessie,  heroine  of  a  poem, 
The  Relief  of  Lticknow,  by  Robert  S. 
Lowell.  Shut  up  in  the  Hindoo  city, 
beleagured  by  Sepoy  mutineers,  Jessie 
Brown,  a  Scotch  servant,  is  the  first 
to  hear  the  piping  of  the  pibrochs 
that  announce  the  arrival  of  British 
relief.    In  great  joy  she  cries  out: 


Brown 


76 


Bucket 


The  Highlanders!     Oh,  dinna  ye  hear 

The  slogan  far  awa? 
The  McGregors?    Ah,  I  ken  it  weel; 

It  is  the  grandest  of  them  a'. 

Boucicatdt  introduced  the  same 
incident  in  his  drama  Jessie  Brown 
(1862).  Both  poet  and  dramatist 
found  it  current  in  papers  contempo- 
rary with  the  raising  of  the  siege.  But 
it  was  a  pure  invention  of  a  French 
joumaHst.  It  was  accepted  for  fact, 
was  copied  as  such  into  the  English 
papers,  and  will  very  likely  live  for- 
ever in  history,  though  it  was  cate- 
gorically denied  by  the  Calcutta 
correspondent  of  the  London  Non- 
conformist. (See  Notes  and  Queries, 
VII,  iii,  480,  and  II,  v,  147,  425;  also 
Illustrated  American,  June  14,  1890.) 

Brown,  Matilda,  more  affection- 
ately known  as  Miss  Mattie,  the 
principal  female  character  in  Mrs. 
Gaskell's  Cranford  (1853). 

Her  gentleness  of  heart  and  depth  of 
a£fection,  her  conscientious  and  dignified 
sense  of  right,  her  perpetual  shelter  under 
the  precepts  and  counsels  of  beloved  ones 
who  have  gone  before — ^invest  the  character 
with  an  interest  which  is  unique  when  her 
weakness  of  intellect  and  narrowness  of 
training  are  also  considered. — Athenceum. 

Brown,  Tom  (i.e.,  Thomas),  hero 
of  two  famous  tales  by  Thomas 
Hughes:  Tom  Brown* s  School-days 
(1857)  and  Tom  Brown  at  Oxford 
(1861),  illustrating  respectively  pubHc 
school  and  collegiate  life  in  England. 
A  typical  EngUsh  boy  of  the  higher 
middle  classes,  with  the  wholesome 
British  virtues  of  pluck,  honesty,  and 
a  love  of  fair  play, — he  enters  the 
lowest  form  at  Rugby  and  develops 
from  a  homesick,  timid  lad  into  a  big, 
brawny  fellow,  a  football  hero  and  the 
head  of  the  school,  and  so  passes  on 
to  Oxford  where  he  continues  his 
career  on  the  same  robust  lines.  In 
the  main  "  Tom  "  Hughes  may  have 
drawn  "  Tom  "  Brown  from  himself; 
but  his  schoolfellow.  Rev.  Augustus 
Orlebar  (1824-1913),  was  generally 
recognized  as  the  hero  of  the  famous 
fight  with  "  Slugger  "  Williams  which 
set  all  Rugby  rejoicing. 

Brown,  "  Lieutenant  "  Vanbeest, 
in  Scott's  novel,  Guy  Mannering,  the 
mate  of  Dirk  Hatteraick's  smuggling 


vessel  who  brings  up  the  kidnapped 
Harry  Bertram  as  his  son  and  gives 
him  his  name.  He  is  fatally  wotmded 
during  the  smugglers'  attack  on 
Woodboume.  Glossin,  finding  that 
the  pseudo  "  Vanbeest  Brown  "  is 
really  the  heir  to  Ellangowan,  tries 
to  ruin  his  cause  by  identifying  him 
with  the  smuggler. 

Brummell,  Beau,  hero  and  title  of 
a  drama  by  Clyde  Fitch.  The  sub- 
ject had  previously  been  treated  less 
successfully  by  Blanchard  Jerrold  in 
Beau  Brummell,  the  King  of  Calais 

(1859). 

Brute,  Sir  John  and  Lady,  leading 
characters  in  Vanbrugh's  comedy, 
The  Provoked  Wife. 

Sir  John  Brute  is  Vanbrugh's  masterpiece. 
Caricature  though  he  be,  there  are  many 
touches  of  nature  about  him.  He  is  the 
beau  inverted,  the  man  of  fashion  crossed 
with  the  churl.  And  he  is  fully  conscious 
of  his  dignity.  "Who  do  you  call  a  drunken 
fellow,  you  slut,  you?"  he  asks  his  wife. 
"I'm  a  man  of  quality;  the  king  has  made 
me  a  knight."  His  cry  is  "Liberty  and 
property,  and  old  England,  Huzza!"  He 
stands  out  in  high  relief  by  the  side  of  Lady 
Brute  and  Belinda  who  speak  with  the 
accent  of  every  day. — Felix  E.  Schelling, 
Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature, 
viii,  183. 

Buck,  the  canine  hero  of  Jack 
London's  novel.  The  Call  of  the  Wild 
(1903),  a  St.  Bernard  shepherd  dog 
who  feels  the  ancestral  past  surging 
through  blood  and  brain.  Behind 
him  were  the  shades  of  all  manner  of 
dogs  and  half  wolves  and  wolves 
dictating  his  moods  and  directing  his 
actions.  "  Deep  in  the  forest  a  call 
was  sounding  and  as  often  as  he 
heard  this  call,  mysteriously  thrilling 
and  luring  he  felt  compelled  to  turn 
his  back  upon  the  fire  and  the  beaten 
earth  around  it,  and  to  plunge  into 
the  forest  and  on  and  on,  he  knew  not 
where  or  how." 

Bucket,  Inspector,  the  detective 
officer  in  Dickens's  Bleak  House. 

Neither  Chaucer  nor  Molidre  has  ever 
breathed  life  into  a  child  of  his  genius  more 
worthy  and  more  sure  of  immortality. 
Blathers  and  Duff,  the  Bow-Street  runners, 
will  always  hold  a  place  in  all  men's  affec- 
tionate remembrance,  while  gratitude 
cherishes  and  admiration  embalms  the 
name  of  Conkey  Chickweed;  but  they  are 
faint  and  pale  precursors  of  the  incompar- 


Buckingham 


77 


Bumble 


able  Mr.  Bucket.  It  is  a  crowning  feather 
In  the  cap  of  Mr.  WiUde  Collins  that  he 
alone  should  have  been  able  to  give  us,  in 
the  person  of  Sergeant  CuflE,  a  second  detec- 
tive oflScer  worthy  to  be  named  in  the  same 
day  with  that  matchless  master  of  them 
all. — Swinburne,  Charles  Dickens,  { 

Buckingham,  George  Villiers,  the 
first  Duke  of,  and  his  son,  the  second 
Duke,  who  bore  the  same  name,  both 
appear  in  the  Waverley  Novels.  The 
first,  **  the  omnipotent  favorite  both 
of  the  King  [James  I]  and  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  "—called  "  Steenie  " 
by  the  king  from  a  fancied  resem- 
blance to  the  Italian  pictures  of 
Stephen  the  martyr — is  a  prominent 
character  in  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel 
(1822).  The  second  figures  both  in 
Woodstock  (1826),  where  he  is  one  of 
the  gallants  of  Charles  II's  "  wander- 
ing court,"  and  in  Peveril  of  the  Peak 
(1823),  where  he  continues  to  be  **  the 
most  Ucentious  and  most  gay  "  amid 
*'  the  gay  and  the  Hcentious  of  the 
laughing  court  of  Charles."  Dryden, 
in  Absalom  and  Achitophel  (1681), 
had  caricatured  this  second  Duke 
under  the  name  of  Zimri  (g.r.),  and 
Macaulay  complains  that  Walter 
Scott,  following  too  closely  on  the 
lines  laid  down  by  Dryden,  has  pro- 
duced only  a  personified  epigram. 
"  Admiring,  as  every  judicious  reader 
must  admire,  the  keen  and  vigorous 
lines  in  which  Dryden  satirized  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham,  Sir  Walter 
attempted  to  make  a  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham to  suit  them,  a  real  living 
Zimri,  and  he  produced  not  a  man 
but  the  most  grotesque  of  all  mon- 
sters." 

Bulba  Taras,  hero  and  title  of  a 
gruesome  story  (1839)  of  Cossack  life 
m  the  fifteenth  century  by  Nikolai 
F.  Gogol.  Taras  is  a  strange  com- 
pound of  savagery  and  devotion. 
One  of  his  sons  Andrii  turns  traitor 
against  the  Cossacls,  and  Taras  slays 
him.  Another,  Ostap,  is  capttued  and 
taken  to  Warsaw  where  he  is  tortured 
to  death,  Taras  himself,  in  disgxiise, 
being  a  witness  to  the  execution. 
Thereafter  he  is  devoured  by  a  mad 
passion  for  vengeance.  He  raises  an 
army  and  pitilessly  slays,  bums  and 
plunders,  shouting  always  "  This  is  a 


mass  for  Ostap!  "  He  is  captured — 
one  man  against  thirty — and  burned 
to  death,  but  in  the  midst  of  his  last 
agonies  he  shouts  a  warning  which 
saves  his  Cossack  adherents. 

Bull,  John,  a  humorous  personifi- 
cation of  the  English  people,  made 
his  first  appearance  in  John  Arbuth- 
not's  History  of  John  Bull  (1712), 
designed  to  ridicule  the  Diike  of 
Marlborough  (satirized  as  Hocus) 
and  turn  the  nation  against  the 
French  war.  He  is  described  as  in 
the  main  an  honest,  plain-dealing 
fellow  and  of  a  very  imconstant 
temper,  "very  apt  to  quarrel  with 
his  best  friends  especially  if  they  pre- 
tended to  govern  him;  if  you  flattered 
him  you  might  lead  him  hke  a  child. 
John's  temper  depended  very  much 
upon  the  air;  his  spirits  rose  and  fell 
with  the  weather  glass.  John  was 
quick  and  understood  his  business 
very  weU;  but  no  man  alive  was  more 
careless  in  looking  into  his  accounts, 
or  more  cheated  by  partners,  appren- 
tices and  servants.  This  was  occa- 
sioned by  his  being  a  boon  companion, 
loving  his  bottle  and  his  diversion, 
for,  to  say  truth,  no  man  kept  a  better 
house  than  John,  nor  spent  his  money 
more  generously."  See  also  John 
Bull  in  vol.  11. 

Bumble,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  Oliver 
Twist  (1837),  the  beadle  at  the  work- 
house where  Oliver  was  bom,  mean 
and  cowardly  and  puffed  up  with  the 
insolence  of  oflSce.  His  courtship  of 
Mrs.  Comey,  matron  of  the  work- 
house, his  marriage  to  her,  his  fail- 
ure to  bully  her  into  submission  and 
eventual  reduction  to  Sk  figure-head 
in  his  own  household,  give  point  to 
his  famous  epigram  when  accused  of 
theft.  Pleading  that  "  it  was  all  Mrs. 
Bumble;  she  would  do  it,"  he  is  told 
"  the  law  supposes  that  your  wife 
acts  tmder  your  direction."  **  If 
the  law  supposes  that,"  said  Mr. 
Bumble,  squeezing  his  hat  emphati- 
cally in  both  hands,  "  the  law  is  a  ass, 
a  idiot.  If  that's  the  eye  of  the  law, 
the  law's  a  bachelor;  and  the  worst  I 
wish  the  law  is,  that  his  eye  may  be 
opened  by  experience — by  experi- 
ence." 


Bumppo 


78 


Bunsby 


Bumppo,   Natty    {i.e.,   Nathaniel), 

the  real  name  of  a  famous  character 
who  figures  under  various  pseudo- 
nyms (the  Deerslayer,  Hawkeye, 
Leatherstocking  and  the  Pathfinder) 
in  a  series  of  novels  of  frontier  life  in 
America  by  James  Fenimore  Cooper. 
These  novels  are  known  collectively 
as  the  Leather  stocking  series  from 
Natty 's  most  popular  nickname.  In 
the  chronological  order  of  incident, 
he  appears  in  the  following  sequence: 
The  Deerslayer  (1841),  which  portrays 
his  youth  and  early  adventures;  The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans  (1826),  showing 
him  in  the  prime  of  life,  taking  part 
in  the  romantic  incidents  of  the  old 
French  war  of  1756-1757;  The  Path- 
finder (1840),  describing  his  hopeless 
love  for  Mabel  Dunham;  The  Pio- 
neers, in  which  he  is  an  old  man 
of  seventy  back  again  in  the  regions 
near  Lake  Otsego  where  he  had  spent 
his  boyhood;  and  The  Prairie  (1826), 
where  he  makes  his  last  appearance 
as  an  octogenarian  trapper  on  the 
upper  Missouri,  driven  west  by  the 
inroads  of  civilization. 

Of  all  the  children  of  his  brain,  Natty 
Bumppo  is  the  most  universal  favorite — and 
herein  the  popular  judgment  is  assuredly 
right.  He  is  an  original  conception — and 
not  more  happily  conceived  than  skilfully 
executed.  It  was  a  hazardous  undertaking 
to  present  the  character  backwards,  and  let 
us  see  the  closing  scenes  of  his  life  first — 
like  a  Hebrew  Bible,  of  which  the  beginning 
is  at  the  end;  but  the  author's  genius  has 
triumphed  over  the  perils  of  the  task,  and 
given  us  a  delineation  as  consistent  and 
symmetrical  as  it  is  striking  and  vigorous. 
Ignorant  of  books,  simple  and  credulous, 
guileless  himself,  and  suspecting  no  evil 
in  others,  with  moderate  intellectual  powers, 
he  commands  our  admiration  and  respect 
by  his  courage,  his  love  of  nature,  his  skill 
in  woodland  lore,  his  unerring  moral  sense, 
his  strong  affections,  and  the  veins  of  poetry 
that  run  through  his  rugged  nature  like 
Bfmms  of  gold  in  quartz. — Atlantic  Monthly. 

Biincle,  John,  hero  of  a  novel  by 
John  Amory,  The  Life  of  John  Buncle, 
Esq.  (1766),  a  sort  of  iimocent  Blue- 
beard who  marries  seven  wives  and 
loses  them  all  through  no  fault  of  his 
own,  but  with  no  diminution  of  his 
habitual  vivacity.  To  stumble  upon 
a  fine  country  house,  to  find  in  it  a 
lady  of  exquisite  beauty  and  amazing 
intellectual  qualifications,  to  marry 


her  offhand  and  bury  her  in  the  next 
page,  is  Buncle's  regular  practice. 
Though  his  amours  are  aU  decorous 
he  can  be  wild  enough  in  other  ways. 
He  loses  in  one  night's  gambling  "  all 
the  thousands  he  had  gained  by  his 
several  wives."  He  once  drank  for  a 
day  and  a  night,  with  a  party  all 
naked,  except  that  they  had  on 
breeches,  shoes,  and  stockings;  and 
in  that  time  he  consimied  so  much 
burgundy  that  "  the  sweat  ran  of  a 
red  colour  down  his  body."  He  was 
so  bewildered  by  his  potations  that, 
on  riding  out  for  a  little  air,  he  leapt 
his  horse  into  a  frightful  quany  and 
was  only  saved  by  descending  into  a 
deep  pool.  "  This  is  a  fact,"  he  adds, 
"  whatever  my  critics  may  say  of  the 
thing.  All  I  can  say  to  it  is,  my  hour 
was  not  come." 

Bungay,  in  Thackeray's  Pendennis, 
a  publisher  who  issues  Arthur's  novel 
and  is  financially  interested  in  a  pro- 
posed weekly,  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 
He  is  a  caricature  of  Colbum,  pro- 
prietor of  *he  New  Monthly  Magazine. 
Colbum  had  decided  against  the  pub- 
lication of  Vanity  Fair  when  Thack- 
eray submitted  the  earlier  chapters  to 
him. 

Bungay  or  Bongay,  Friar,  in  English 
folklore,  a  sort  of  familiar  of  Friar 
Bacon  (who  because  of  his  experi- 
ments in  natural  science  was  held  to 
be  a  magician  in  league  with  the 
powers  of  hell)  and  a  co-practitioner 
of  the  Black  Art.  He  appears  in  this 
character  in  Robert  Greene's  comedy, 
Friar  Bacon  and  Friar  Bungay 
(1594).  After  many  astonishing  ex- 
ploits the  piece  concludes  with  the 
carrying  off  of  one  of  their  pupils  on 
the  back  of  a  demon. 

Bunsby,  Captain  Jack,  in  Dickens's 
Dombey  and  Son  (1846),  owner  of  the 
Cautious  Clara  and  a  great  friend  of 
Captain  Cuttle,  who  looks  up  to  him 
as  "a  philosopher  and  quite  an 
oracle."  With  all  his  caution  and 
prudence  he  is  entrapped  into  an 
unwilling  marriage  by  his  landlady, 
Mrs.  MacStinger.  The  captain  had 
a  very  red  face  adorned  with  "  one 
stationery  and  one  revolving  eye;  " 
he  wears  "  a  rapt  and  imperturbable 


Burchell 


79 


Bums 


manner  "  and  seems  to  be  "  always 
on  the  lookout  for  something  in  the 
extreme  distance." 

Burchell,  Mr.,  in  Goldsmith's  novel 
The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  the  name 
under  which  Sir  WilHam  Thomhill 
(q.v.)  prefers  to  be  known  when  he 
goes  around  as  an  incognito  bene- 
factor— a  righter  of  the  wrongs  of  the 
poor  and  oppressed. 

Biurgtmdy,  Charles  the  Bold,  Duke 
of  (1433- 1 437).  one  of  the  greatest 
princes  of  Europe,  whose  niind  was 
set  upon  extending  the  dominions  of 
his  house  in  every  direction,  but  who 
came  to  grief  at  the  siege  of  Nancy, 
appears  as  an  important  character  in 
two  of  Walter  Scott's  novels,  Quentin 
Durward  and  Anne  of  Gier stein. 

Burke,  Thomas,  known  familiarly 
as  Tom,  the  hero  of  Charles  Lever's 
historical  romance,  Tom  Burke  of 
Ours  (1844).  The  orphaned  son  of 
an  Irish  gentleman,  he  gets  mixed  up 
when  little  more  than  a  child  in  an 
Irish  plot  against  the  government,  is 
arrested,  contrives  to  escape,  and 
flees  to  France,  where  he  enters  the 
^ole  militaire  and  is  given  a  commis- 
sion by  Napoleon  himself.  Subse- 
quently he  is  imjustly  suspected  of 
complicity  in  the  Chouan  conspiracy 
in  which  Georges  Cadoual  loses  his 
Hfe,  takes  his  trial  with  the  leaders, 
and  is  saved  only  by  the  intercession 
of  personages  in  high  places.  This  is 
an  historical  novel  of  the  old  school, 
in  which  an  obscure  Irishman  mixes 
in  the  best  society,  is  always  on  the 
spot  at  the  right  moment,  and  is 
invariably  in  the  confidence  of  his 
generals.  Napoleon — the  Napoleon 
of  fiction,  tender  at  one  moment, 
cruel  at  the  next — figures  largely  in 
the  tale,  and  Tom  is  frequently  in  his 
presence,  on  one  occasion  actually 
saves  his  life,  and  at  the  end  meets 
him  by  accident  at  Fontainebleau  on 
the  eve  of  his  abdication. 

Burleigh,  Lord  of,  in  Tennyson's 
ballad  of  that  title,  a  landscape 
painter  who  wooes  and  weds  a  simple 
village  maiden  and  after  the  cere- 
mony takes  her  to  a  magnificent 
coimtry  seat,  where  niunerous  attend- 
ants bow  down  before  him  and  in- 


forms her  that  all  she  sees  is  hers  and 
his — for  he  is  the  Lord  of  Burleigh, 
the  greatest  man  in  all  the  country. 
But  "  the  burden  of  a  greatness  to 
which  she  was  not  bom  "  proved  too 
much  for  the  little  country  girl,  and 
in  a  few  years  she  faded  away  and 
died. 

Tennyson  has  founded  his  poem  on 
a  slender  basis  of  fact.  Henry  Cecil, 
heir  to  the  Earldom  of  Exeter,  being 
unhappily  married  to  Emma  Vernon 
of  Hanbury  and  oppressed  with  debts, 
retired  to  the  village  of  Bolas  Com- 
mon in  Shropshire  where  he  assumed 
the  incognito  of  Mr.  Jones.  Here 
he  fell  in  love  with  a  country  girl, 
whose  unromantic  name  was  Sarah 
Hoggins.  Despite  the  difference 
in  their  ages — for  she .  was  fifteen 
and  he  was  thirty-five — ^he  married 
her  as  soon  as  he  could  obtain  a 
divorce.  He  Uved  with  his  wife  sev- 
eral years  in  Bolas,  until  his  imcle, 
the  Earl  of  Exeter,  discovered  his 
retreat  and  invited  the  young  people 
to  come  and  Hve  with  him  at  Bur- 
leigh Hall,  the  family  seat.  On  the 
death  of  the  uncle  Cecil  became  Earl, 
and,  subsequently.  Marquis  of  Exeter. 
The  "  fading  "  of  Sarah  appears  to 
have  been  a  slow  one,  for  she  left 
three  children. 

It  is  a  curious  coincidence  that  the 
story  of  how  a  lover  of  apparently 
low  degree  discovers  himself  after 
marriage  to  be  both  noble  and 
wealthy  is  a  common  one  in  the 
ballad  Hterattire  of  all  countries.  The 
Scotch  alone  have  four  well-known 
versions:  Donald  of  the  Isles,  Earl  Rich- 
mond, Lizie  Lindsay,  Huntingtower. 

Burley,  John,  in  Bulwer-Ljrtton's 
My  Novel,  an  impoverished  ne'er-do- 
well,  a  literary  hack,  never  sober, 
never  solvent,  but  always  genial, 
always  witty,  preserving  through  a 
wild  and  dissipated  life  something  of 
the  innocence  and  freshness  of  his 
childhood,  and,  on  his  death-bed,  like 
Falstaff,  babbling  of  green  fields. 

Bums,  Helen,  in  Charlotte  Br6nte  s 
Jane  Eyre,  the  school-fellow  of  the 
heroine  at  Lowood  school,  a  gentle, 
patient,  long-suffering  girl  who  finally 
sucamibs  to  the  cruel  treatment  of 


Busiris 


80 


Byron 


Mrs.  Scatcherd.  She  is  drawn  from 
Charlotte's  sister  Maria  who  was 
carried  out  dying  from  the  school  at 
Cowan's  Bridge  near  Leeds,  "  as 
exact  a  transcript,"  says  Mrs.  Gas- 
kell,  "  as  Charlotte's  wonderful  power 
of  reproducing  character  could  give." 
Mrs.  Gaskell  adds  that  Charlotte's 
heart  "  beat,  to^  the  latest  day  on 
which  we  met,  with  tmavailing  indig- 
nation at  the  worrying  and  cruelty 
to  which  her  gentle,  patient,  dying 
sister  "  was  subjected  by  the  original 
of  Mrs.  Scatcherd. 

Busiris,  hero  and  title  of  a  bloody 
and  bombastic  tragedy  _  (171 8)  by 
Edward  Young.  Busiris,  king  of 
Egypt,  has  murdered  his  predecessor 
on  the  throne  and  in  turn  is  plotted 
against  by  Memnon.  In  the  end  he 
dies  of  wounds  received  in  conflict, 
his  wife  Myris  is  torn  to  pieces  by 
the  mob  and  his  son  Myron  is  slain 
by  Memnon.  A  story  told  of  this 
monarch  by  Herodotus  (ii,  59-61)  is 
typical  of  his  rough  and  ready  humor. 
It  is  thus  versified  by  Ovid  in  the 
Art  of  Love: 

'Tis  said  that  Egypt  for  nine  years  was  dry: 
Nor  Nile  did  floods,  nor  heaven  did  rain 

supply. 
A  foreigner  at  length  informed  the  king 
That  slaughtered  guests  would  kindly  mois- 
ture bring. 
The  king  replied  "On  thee  the  lot  shall  fall; 
Be  thou,  my  guest,  the  sacrifice  for  all." 

In  Paradise  Lost,  i,  306,  Milton 
identifies  Busiris  with  the  Pharaoh 
drowned  in  the  Red  Sea. 

Bussy,  D'Ambois,  hero  and  title  of 
a  tragedy  (1607)  by  George  Chapman, 
and  of  its  sequel,  The  Revenge  of 
Bussy  D'Ambois  (1613).  It  is 
founded  on  fact;  D'Ambois  was  a 
gentleman  of  the  court  of  Henry  III 
of  France  whose  love  for  a  married 
lady  resulted  in  his  assassination. 

Chapman,  the  writer  who  in  fulness  and 
fire  of  thought  approaches  most  nearly  to 
Shakespeare,  is  an  ardent  worshipper  of 
pure  energy  of  character.  His  Bussy 
D'Ambois  cannot  be  turned  from  his  pur- 

E>se  even  by  the  warnings  of  the  ghost  of 
s  accomplice,  and  a  mysterious  spirit 
summoned  expressly  to  give  advice.  Pure, 
undiluted  energy,  stern  force  of  will,  delight 
In  danger  for  its  own  sake,  contempt  for 
all  laws  but  the  self-imposed — those  are 
the  cardinal  virtues  and  challenge  our  sym- 


pathies even  when  they  lead  the  possessor 
to  destruction. — Leslie  Stephen:  Hours 
in  a  Library,  iii,  26. 

Buttercup,  Little,  in  Gilbert  and 
Siillivan's  comic  opera  H.  M,  S.  Pina- 
fore (1877),  the  bumboat  woman,  re- 
sponsible for  having  changed  at 
nurse  the  two  babes  who  grow  up 
respectively  to  be  Ralph  Rackstraw 
and  the  Captain  of  the  Pinafore. 
An  earlier  study  in  the  same  stratvun 
of  life  was  Poll  Pineapple  in  the  Bum- 
boat  Woman's  Story,  one  of  Gilbert's 
Bab  Ballads,  who  dressed  herself  in 
seaman's  clothes  and  sailed  with 
Lieutenant  Belaye  in  the  Hot  Cross 
Bun.  One  day  the  lieutenant  an- 
nounced that  he  had  just  married 
her,  when  all  the  crew  fainted.  For  it 
turned  out  that  all  were  females  who 
had  disguised  themselves  to  follow 
the  fascinating  lieutenant. 

Buzfuz,  Sergeant,  in  the  Pickwick 
Papers  (1836),  by  Charles  Dickens,  a 
pleader  retained  by  Dodson  and  Fogg 
for  the  plaintiff  in  the  famous  breach- 
of-promise  case,  Bardell  v.  Pickwick. 
He  is  a  capital  caricatiire  of  the  bla- 
tant and  boisterous  forensic  orator 
and  the  brutal  and  insolent  cross- 
examiner,  and  is  said  to  have  been 
studied  from  Sergeant  Bompas,  a 
London  criminal  lawyer  of  much 
celebrity  in  his  day. 

Byron,  Cashel,  the  pugilist  hero  of 
George  Bernard  Shaw's  novel,  Cashel 
Byron's  Profession.  The  son  of  an 
English  actress,  he  ran  away  from 
school,  worked  his  passage  to  Austra- 
lia, made  his  mark  (in  more  senses 
than  one)  in  the  eye  of  the  antipodean 
public,  and  returned  to  England  to 
find  a  patron  and  backer  in  Lord 
Worthington,  an  enthusiastic  sup- 
porter of  the  manly  art  of  self-defence. 
Installed  in  a  cottage  on  Lydia 
Carew's  estate,  he  is  given  out  to  be 
an  invalid,  but  in  reality  is  in  strict 
training  for  a  prize-fight.  The  situa- 
tion is  developed  with  perfect  dis- 
regard for  conventionality  and  con- 
stant resort  to  the  unexpected  until 
it  reaches  its  impossible  yet  logical 
conclusion,  Lydia,  for  all  her  clever- 
ness, being  the  last  to  penetrate 
Cashel  Byron's  disguise,  and,  when 


Byron  81 

recognition  is  forced  upon  her,  defying 
the  traditions  of  her  caste  with 
imperturbable  equanimity. 

Byron,  Miss  Harriet,  in  Richard- 
son's Sir  Charles  Grandison  (1754), 
an  orphan  of  great  personal  charms 


Caesar 

(enhanced  by  the  possession  of  a 
comfortable  fortune  of  j^i 5,000)  who 
falls  in  love  at  first  sight  with  the 
titular  hero  and  eventually  marries 
him,  despite  the  rival  claims  of  the 
Lady  Clementina, 


Cabestainy,  William,  hero  of  a 
lay  simg  by  Thiebault  in  Scott's 
Anne  of  Geier stein.  Cabestainy  was 
a  troubadour  who  had  an  intrigue 
with  Margaret,  wife  of  Baron  Ray- 
mond de  Roussillon.  The  baron 
assassinated  him  and  ordered  his 
heart  to  be  dressed  and  served  to  the 
lady.  She  declared  that  after  food 
so  precious  "  no  coarser  morsal  should 
ever  after  cross  her  lips."  The  story 
may  be  foimd  in  Boccaccio's  De- 
cameron. 

Cadenus  (an  anagram  of  decanus, 
"  dean "),  the  name  which  Dean 
Swift  gives  himself  in  the  poem 
Cadenus  and  Vanessa  (1726).  See 
Vanessa. 

Cadurcis,  Lord,  in  DisraeH's  Ven- 
itia,  a  poet  and  an  active  political 
intriguer  during  the  period  subse- 
quent to  the  coalition  ministry  of 
Lord  North.  He  is  drawn  from  Lord 
Byron,  as  his  friend  Marmion  Herbert 
is  drawn  from  Shelley,  but  there  is  a 
purposed  confusion  between  fact  and 
fiction.  Venitia  is  the  daughter  of 
Herbert  and  the  wife  of  Cadurcis. 

Cadwallader,  Rev.  Mr.,  in  George 
Eliot's  novel,  Middlemarch  (1872), 
the  rector  of  the  parish,  a  provokingly 
amiable  man.  '  *  He  even  spoke  well  of 
his  bishop."  A  little  more  acerbity 
is  conceded  to  Mrs.  Cadwallader,  his 
wife,  a  bright  bit  of  worldly  common- 
sense  who  distributes  epigrams  among 
her  provincial  acquaintances,  quite 
like  a  well-educated  Mrs.  Poyser. 

Cadwallon,  in  Scott's  romance,  The 
Betrothed,  the  chief  bard  of  Gwenwyn, 
a  Welsh  prince.  Swearing  revenge 
after  his  master  was  slain  by  Hugo 
de  Lacy,  he  assimies  the  name  and 
guise  of  Renault  Vidal,  a  minstrel, 
accompanies  Sir  Hugo  to  the  crusade 
and  seeks  to  compass  his  death. 
6 


Caesar,  Julius  (b.c.  100-44),    the 

greatest  of  all  the  Romans,  dictator 
and  undisputed  master  of  the  Roman 
world  from  the  defeat  of  the  Pom- 
peian  army  at  Thapsus,  April  6,  B.C. 
46,  until  his  own  assassination  by 
Brutus  and  other  conspirators  on 
March  15,  44  B.C.  He  is  a  prominent 
character  in  many  English  and  Euro- 
pean plays  of  which  preeminently  the 
chief  is  Shakespeare's  Life  and  Death 
of  Julius  Ccesar  (1601).  Shakespeare 
does  scant  justice  to  the  splendid 
abilities  and  noble  nature  of  the  dic- 
tator. He  follows  in  outHne  the  story 
told  by  P  utarch  but  almost  as  a  bur- 
lesque might  follow  the  outlines  of  a 
heroic  drama.  His  Julius  Caesar  is 
little  more  than  a  glorified  Parolles,  a 
bombastic  Braggadochio  who  saves 
the  play  from  failure  by  his  lucky 
removal  in  Act  iii,  Sc.  I.  George 
Bernard  Shaw  echoes  a  favorite  opin- 
ion when  he  boldly  says  that  "it  is 
impossible  for  even  the  most  judicially 
minded  critic  to  look  without  a  revul- 
sion of  indignant  contempt  at  this 
travestying  of  a  great  man  as  a  silly 
braggart,  whilst  the  pitiful  gang  of 
mischief-makers  who  destroyed  him 
are  lauded  as  statesmen  and  patriots. 

Mr.  Shaw  adds:  "  There  is  not  a 
single  sentence  uttered  by  Shakes- 
peare's Julius  Caesar  that  is,  I  will  not 
say  worthy  of  him,  but  even  worthy 
of  an  average  Tammany  boss." 

Shaw  avowed  that  he  wrote  his 
own  Ccesar  and  Cleopatra  (1898)  "  to 
give  Shakespeare  a  lead." 

"Shakespeare's  Caesar  is  the  reductio  ad 
absurdum  of  the  real  Julius  Cffisar."  Mr. 
Shaw  once  remarked  to  me:  "My  Caesar  is 
a  simple  return  to  nature  and  history.  — - 
Archibald  Henderson:  George  Bernard 
Shaw,  p.  332. 

Caesar,  in  fact,  is  the  one  blot  on  the  play, 
and  I  wonder  that  Shakespeare  did  not 
recognise  the  fiasco.     There  is  an  obvioxia 


Cain 


82 


Calendau 


reason  why  we  cannot  accept  Caesar  as  he 
is  here  presented.  He  appears  merely  as  a 
subordinate  figure,  with  very  little  time  to 
disport  himself  on  the  stage.  Our  notion  of 
the  real  Caesar  is  a  notion  of  such  awe,  he 
looms  so  largely  over  us,  that  we  could  not 
possibly  be  illuded  by  a  stage-figure  of  him 
unless  it  were  a  central  and  dominant  figure, 
elaborately  created.  Also,  we  think  of 
Caesar  always  as  a  man  of  enormous  power, 
a  conqueror,  a  bender  of  wills ;  whereas  here  he 
is  presented  as  a  purely  passive  figure  in  the 
hands  of  fate  and  of  a  few  men  who  disliked 
him.  Historically  this  presentment  of  him 
is  right  enough,  but  dramatically  it  is  no 
good  at  all.  Had  Shakespeare  shown  him 
to  us  first  in  all  the  majesty  of  his  will,  then 
the  coming  of  his  doom  would  move  us. 
We  should  echo  the  warnings  of  Calpurnia, 
and,  with  the  soothsayer,  clutch  at  his  toga 
as  he  passes  to  the  Senate.  But,  as  we 
hardly  see  him  except  under  the  immediate 
shadow  of  his  doom,  our  imagination  is 
unstirred:  we  do  not  see  Caesar,  but  only  a 
stage-puppet,  a  transparent  ghost. — Max 
Beerbohm:  Saturday  Review,  September 
15,  1900. 

f  Cain,  the  son  of  Adam  and 
and  slayer  of  his  brother  Abel  (Gene- 
sis, Chap,  iv),  is  the  hero  of  Byron's 
Cain,  a  Mystery  (182 1).  It  is  called 
"  a  mystery,"  Byron  explains,  in 
conformity  with  the  title  annexed  by 
mediaeval  authors  to  dramas  dealing 
with  Biblical  subjects.  Byron  as- 
sumes with  Cuvier  that  the  world  had 
been  destroyed  several  times  before 
the  creation  of  man.  His  attempt  to 
re-state  the  metaphysical  or  theo- 
logical problem  of  the  origin  of  evil 
raised  a  storm  of  remonstrance.  The 
"  parsons  preached  at  it  from  Kentish 
Town  to  Pisa. "  "  Even, ' '  says  Byron, 
'*  the  very  highest  authority  in  the 
land,  King  George  IV,  expressed  his 
disapprobation  of  the  blasphemy  and 
licentiousness  of  Lord  Byron's  writ- 
ings! "  Better  judges  thought  differ- 
ently. Scott,  to  whom  the  Mystery 
was  dedicated,  said  that  the  author 
"  had  matched  Milton  on  his  own 
ground."  Shelley  declared  that  "  it 
was  a  revelation  never  before  com- 
mimicated  to  man."  Campbell's 
summary  of  the  central  theme  is  con- 
cise and  clear.  "  Cain,"  says  Camp- 
bell, "  disdains  the  limited  existence 
allotted  to  him;  he  has  a  rooted  horror 
of  death,  attended  with  a  vehement 
curiosity  as  to  its  nature;  and  he 
nourished  a  sullen  anger  against  his 
parents,    to    whose    misconduct    he 


ascribes  his  degraded  state.  Added 
to  this,  he  has  an  insatiable  thirst  for 
knowledge  beyond  the  bounds  pre- 
scribed to  mortality;  and  this  part  of 
the  poem  bears  a  strong  resemblance 
to  Manfred,  whose  counterpart  in- 
deed, in  the  main  points  of  character, 
Cain  seems  to  be." 

Caius,  Dr.,  in  Shakespeare's  com- 
edy, The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  an 
irascible  French  physician  whose 
clipped  English  is  amusing.  A  suitor 
to  Anne  Page,  he  sends  a  challenge 
to  his  imagined  ^  rival.  Parson 
Evans. 

Calantha,  heroine  of  John  Ford's 
tragedy.  The  Broken  Heart  (1633). 
Daughter  of  the  King  of  Laconia 
(Sparta),  she  is  wooed  and  won  by 
Ithocles  through  the  initiative  of  his 
sister  Penthea.  While  presiding  over 
the  court  revels  she  hears  in  quick 
succession  of  the  death  of  her  father, 
of  the  starving  of  Penthea,  and  finally 
of  the  murder  of  Ithocles,  who  has 
been  lured  into  a  chair  with  secret 
springs  and  there  stabbed  by  Orgilus. 
She  finishes  the  dance  ^  as  though 
nothing  had  happened;  in  the  next 
scene  places  a  ring  upon  the  finger  of 
the  dead  Ithocles,  and,  broken- 
hearted, falls  dead. 

I  do  not  know  where  to  find,  in  any  play, 
a  castrophe  so  grand,  so  solemn  and  so  sur- 
prising as  this.  The  fortitude  of  the  Spartan 
boy  who  let  a  beast  gnaw  out  his  bowels  till 
he  died,  without  expressing  a  groan,  is  a 
faint  bodily  image  of  this  delaceration  of  the 
spirit  and  exenteration  of  the  inmost  mind, 
which  Calantha,  with  a  holy  violence  against 
her  nature,  keeps  closely  covered  till  the 
last  duties  of  a  wife  and  queen  are  fulfilled. — 
Charles  Lamb. 

Caledonia,  the  ancient  Latin  name 
of  Scotland,  which  still  survives  in 
poetry  and  semi-jest. 

O  Caledonia,  stem  and  wild. 
Meet  nurse  for  apoetic  child! 

Sir  Walter  Scott. 

Calendau,  hero  and  title  of  a  narra- 
tive poem  (1867)  by  Fr4d6ric  Mistral, 
a  poor  fisherman  in  Cassis  Provence 
who  falls  in  love  with  a  strange  lady 
recently  come  to  the  neighborhood. 
He  learns  that  she  is  the  virgin  bride 
of  an  outlaw,  Count  Severan,  whom 
she    had    unwittingly   married   and 


Caliban 


83 


Callista 


abandoned  on  learning  the  truth.  He 
seeks  the  count  and  his  bandit  crew 
in  the  castle  of  Aiglun,  challenges 
him  to  mortal  combat,  but  is  dis- 
armed and  cast  into  a  dungeon. 
Through  one  of  the  outlawed  women, 
who  had  fallen  in  love  with  him, 
Calendau  is  released  and  flies  to  the 
rescue  of  his  lady,  knowing  too  well 
that  Severan  is  in  pursuit  of  her.  He 
arrives  just  in  time  to  hold  the  bandits 
at  bay  until  the  people  rush  to  the 
assistance  of  the  lover  and  his  lady. 
Severan  is  killed  and  Calendau 
married  his  widow. 

Caliban,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy. 
The  Tempest,  a  misshapen  monster 
curiously  anticipating  the  "  missing 
link  "  between  man  and  beast  which 
caused  a  good  deal  of  semi-scientific 
mirth  in  the  early  days  of  the  Dar- 
winian controversy.  The  name  is  a 
metathesis  or  verbal  reconstruction 
of  cannibal.  He  is  represented  as 
the  "  freckled  whelp  "  of  Sycorax,  a 
loathsome  hag  who  had  been  ban- 
ished to  Prospero's  island  from  her 
native  Argier  (Algiers).  Robert 
Browning  has  a  poem  Caliban  upon 
Setebos,  or  Natural  Theology  in  the 
Island,  which  is  an  ingenious  at- 
tempt to  enter  into  the  mind  of  this 
monster  and  picture  his  concept  of  a 
Diety.    See  Setebos. 

It  was  this  character  of  whom  Charles  I 
and  some  of  his  ministers  expressed  such 
fervent  admiration;  and  among  other  cir- 
cumstances most  justly  they  admired  the 
new  language  almost  with  which  he  is  en- 
dowed for  the  purpose  of  expressing  his 
fiendish  and  yet  carnal  thoughts  of  hatred 
to  his  master.  Caliban  is  evidently  not 
meant  for  scorn,  but  for  abomination  mixed 
with  fear  and  partial  respect.  He  is  pur- 
posely brought  into  contrast  with  the 
drunken  Trinculo  and  Stephano,  with  an 
advantageous  result.  He  is  much  more 
intellectual  than  either,  uses  a  more  elevated 
language  not  disfigured  by  vulgarisms,  and 
is  not  liable  to  the  low  passion  for  plunder 
as  they  are.  He  is  mortal,  doubtless,  as 
his  "dam"  (for  Shakespeare  will  not  call 
her  mother)  Sycorax.  But  he  inherits  from 
her  such  qualities  of  power  as  a  witch  could 
be  supposed  to  bequeath.  He  trembles 
indeed  before  Prospero;  but  that  is,  as  we 
are  to  understand,  through  the  moral 
superiority  of  Prospero  in  Christian  wisdom ; 
for  when  he  finds  himself  in  the  presence  of 
dissolute  and  unprincipled  men,  he  rises  at 
once  into  the  dignity  of  intellectual  power. 
— De  Quincey. 


Calidore,  Sir,  in  Spenser's  Fairie 
Queene,  Books  v  and  vi,  the  type  of 
chivalry  and  courtesy,  evidently 
modeled  after  Sir  PhiHp  Sydney.  In 
Canto  xii  of  Book  v  he  begins  his 
quest  of  the  Blatant  Beast  (q.v.) 
which  had  escaped  from  Sir  Artegal. 
His  first  exploit  is  to  make  Lady 
Briana  remit  her  discourteous  toll  of 
"  the  locks  of  ladies  and  the  beards  of 
knights "  (vi,  i).  Falling  in  love 
with  Pastorella,  a  shepherdess,  he 
assumes  shepherd's  guise  and  helps 
her  tend  her  sheep  until  she  is  carried 
off  by  bandits,  when  he  dons  again 
helmet  and  spear,  rescues  the  lady, 
leaves  her  to  be  cared  for  at  Belgard 
Castle,  and  resumes  his  quest  for  the 
Blatant  Beast.  After  a  terrible  fight 
with  the  monster  he  succeeds  in 
chaining  and  muzzling  it  and  drags 
it  after  him.  But  it  breaks  loose 
again  as  it  had  done  before. 

Sir  Calidore  was  a  favorite  char- 
acter with  Keats  who  made  him  the 
hero  of  a  fragment  entitled  Calidore, 
where,  after  an  elaborate  preparation 
for  a  "  tale  of  chivalry  "  and  a  de- 
scription of  the  "  ambitious  heat  of 
the  aspiring  boy,"  Calidore  succeeds 
in  doing  nothing  but  help  two  ladies 
to  descend  from  their  palfreys. 

Calista,  heroine  of  Nicholas  Rowe's 
Fair  Penitent  (1703)  and  wife  of 
Altamont.  Detected  in  an  intrigue 
with  Lothario,  the  latter  is  slain 
by  Altamont,  and  Calista  stabs  her- 
self. 

The  character  of  Calista  Is  quite  in  the 
bravura  style  of  Massinger.  She  is  a  heroine, 
a  virago,  fair,  a  woman  of  high  spirit  and 
violent  resolutions,  anything  but  a  penitent. 
She  dies,  indeed,  at  last,  not  from  remorse 
for  her  vices,  but  because  she  can  no  longer 
gratify  them. — Hazlitt. 

Callista,  heroine  of  Cardinal  New- 
man's historical  romance,  Callista: 
a  Sketch  of  the  Third  Century  (1855). 
A  beautiful  Greek  giri,  a  sculptress, 
who  sings  like  a  Muse,  dances  like  a 
Grace  and  recites  like  Minerva,  she 
is  beloved  by  Agellius,  a  Christian; 
is  herself  converted  through  the 
agency  of  Cyprian,  who  gives  her  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Luke;  suffers  martyr- 
dom  and   is   canonized,   her   death 


Galium  Beg 


84 


Camors 


proving  the  revival  of  the  church 
at  Sicca  where  she  died.  Agellius, 
who  becomes  a  bishop  after  her  death, 
is  likewise  martyred  and  sainted. 

Callum  Beg,  Little,  a  page  in  the 
service  of  Fergus  Mclvor  in  Scott's 
novel  Waverley  (1814),  passionately- 
devoted  to  his  master,  but  "  a  spirit 
naturally  turned  to  daring  evil  and 
determined  by  the  circumstances  of 
his  situation  to  a  particular  kind  of 
mischief."  Though  ready  to  protect 
Edward  Waverley's  life  when  he 
deems  him  the  friend  of  Fergus,  he  is 
equally  willing  to  take  it  in  his 
master's  supposed  interest. 

Calmady,  Sir  Richard,  in  the  novel 
of  that  name  (1901)  by  Lucas  Malet, 
was  born  a  beautiful,  healthy  child 
save  for  one  terrible  deformity — the 
lower  part  of  each  leg  is  missing,  the 
feet  being  attached  at  the  point 
where  the  knees  should  be. 

Lucas  Malet  has  done  her  best  to  make 
Sir  Richard  Calmady  repulsively  attractive. 
But  we  cannot  all  be  expected  to  love  him 
because  he  is  horrible,  as  Helen  does. 
Physical  deformity  in  real  life  excites  pity; 
deformity  invented  for  the  novel  or  the 
stage  excites  only  disgust.  In  the  last  gen- 
eration there  was  an  Irish  member  of  parlia- 
ment who  had  neither  legs  nor  arms.  He 
rode  and  drove.  People  forgot  his  deform- 
ity, or  took  it  for  granted,  though  they  ad- 
mired his  pluck  and  skill.  If  his  biography 
had  been  written,  it  would  have  been  futile 
affectation  to  ignore  his  defects.  Sir^Richard 
Calmady 's  leglessness  is  never  for  an  instant 
forgotten.  That  is  the  difference,  the 
Aristotelian  and  the  real  difference  between 
history  and  art. — Blackwood's  Magazine. 

Calvo,  Baldassare,  in  George 
Eliot's  novel,  Romola,  the  adopted 
father  of  Tito  Melemma.  Tito 
abandons  him  when  he  falls  into  the 
hands  of  pirates,  appropriates  his 
goods,  and  is  hounded  to  his  death 
by  the  vindictive  Baldassare. 

Camille,  heroine  of  a  famous 
American  adaptation  of  a  famous 
French  play.  The  latter  was  The 
Lady  of  the  Camelias  (La  Dame  aux 
Camelias)  by  Alexander  Dumas,  Fils. 
It  ran  for  200  nights  in  Paris,  a  mar- 
vellous success  in  1852.  Among  its 
auditors  was  an  American  actress. 
Miss  Jane  Lander  Davenport,  who 
procured  a  copy  of  the  play,  para- 
phrased it  under  the  title  Camille,  or 


the  Fate  of  a  Coquette,  and  produced  it 
in  New  York,  October  9,  1853,  with 
herself  in  the  title  part.  Three  years 
later  (January  22,  1857)  Matilda 
Heron  appeared  as  Camille  in  a  new 
version  made  by  James  Mortimer, 
and  she  and  her  play  held  possession 
of  the  American  stage  for  an  unpre- 
cedented period,  to  be  followed  by 
Clara  Morris  in  1874  with  almost 
equal  ^clat.  See  Gauthier,  Mar- 
guerite, and  Du  Plessis,  Made- 
leine. 

Camillo,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
A  Winter's  Tale,  a  lord  of  Sicilia.    See 

POLIXENES. 

Camiola,  heroine  of  Massinger's 
drama.  The  Maid  of  Honor  (1637) 
represented  as  a  lady  of  wealth,  spirit 
and  beauty  in  love  with  Bertoldo, 
whose  ransom  she  pays  only  to  meet 
with  ingratitude. 

Camiola,  the  Maid  of  Honor,  deserves 
this  appellation  though  perhaps  the  poet 
impaired  the  nobleness  of  her  presence  and 
of  her  actions  by  two  superfluous  additions : 
the  violence  of  her  refusal  of  an  unwelcome, 
boisterous  wooer — whose  bodily  defects  she 
criticises  in  a  strain  approaching,  though  by 
no  means  equalling,  the  invectives  which  the 
passionate  Donusa  hurls  at  the  head  of  the 
unfortunate  basha  of  Aleppo  when  he  comes 
to  court  her — and  the  cautious  contract 
(taken  from  the  source  of  the  play)  by  which 
Bertoldo,  to  liberate  whom  Camiola  spent 
a  fortune,  is  placed  under  an  obligation 
to  marry  her. — Emil  Kopel:  Cambridge 
Library  of  Literature. 

Camors,  hero  of  a  novel,  M.  de 
Camors  (1867),  by  Octave  Feuillet. 
His  father,  a  suicide,  bequeathes  him 
a  letter  of  solemn  warning  and  advice 
embodying  certain  precepts  learned 
too  late  to  save  himself  from  ruin. 
"  Recognize,"  said  this  cynical  aristo- 
crat, "  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
vice  or  virtue.  Be  absolutely  and 
consistently  selfish.  Cast  off  all 
natural  ties,  instincts,  affections  and 
sympathies,  as  so  many  shackles  on 
your  liberty."  The  son  deliberately 
fashions  his  life  on  these  principles, 
works  hard,  amasses  a  fortune,  in- 
dulges in  elegant  dissipation,  seduces 
his  cousin,  whose  husband  dies  on 
discovering  her  shame,  and  at  last, 
weary  of  his  mistress,  writhing  under 
the  scorn  of  his  wife,  whom  he  had 


Campaigner 


85 


Cantwell 


married  for  convenience,  but  whom 
too  late  he  leams  to  appreciate, 
sick  of  the  world  and  of  his  own  life 
he  dies  unrepentant  and  hopeless. 

Campaigner,  The  Old,  in  Thack- 
eray's novel,  The  Newcomes,  nick- 
name given  to  Mrs.  Mackenzie  {g_.v.) 
the  mother  of  Rosa. 

Camus,  in  Milton's  Lycidas,  a 
personification  of  the  Cam,  the  stream 
on  which  Cambridge  is  situated.  He 
is  thus  described: 

Next,   Camus,  reverend  sire,  went  footing 

slow. 
His  mantle  hairy  and  his  bonnet  sedge, 
Inwrought  with  figures  dim,  and  on  the  edge 
Like  to  that  sanguine  flower  inscribed  with 

woe. 
"Ah,  who  hath  reft,"  quoth  he,  "my  dearest 

pledge." 

Commenting  on  this  passage  Mas- 
son  says:  "  He  comes  attired  in  a 
mantle  of  the  hairy  river-weed  that 
floats  on  the  Cam;  his  bonnet  is  of 
the  sedge  of  that  river,  which  exhibits 
peculiar  markings,  something  like  the 
id,  la  (alas !  alas !)  which  the  Greek 
detected  on  the  leaves  of  the  hyacinth, 
in  token  of  the  sad  death  of  the  Spar- 
tan youth  from  whose  blood  the  flower 
had  sprung." 

Candida,  heroine  and  title  of  a 
comedy  by  George  Bernard  Shaw. 
A  practical,  prosaic  English  matron, 
free  from  all  "  emotional  slop,"  she 
remains  true  to  her  commonplace 
husband,  James  Morrell,  for  "  natural 
reasons,  not  for  conventional  ethical 
ones."  She  loves  him;  she  is  not 
carried  away  by  the  ecstasies  of  the 
brilliant  and  erratic  Eugene  March- 
banks  (evidently  drawn  from  the  poet 
Shelley)  who  wishes  her  to  fly  with 
him.  As  to  the  latter  she  "  makes  a 
man  of  him  by  showing  him  his  own 
strength — that  David  must  do  with- 
out poor  Uriah's  wife."  The  quoted 
passages  are  from  a  letter  written  by 
the  dramatist  to  James  Huneker. 
See  Archibald  Henderson:  George 
Bernard  Shaw,  p.  346. 

The  wife  is  asked  to  decide  between  two 
men,  one  a  strenuous,  self-confident  popular 
preacher,  her  husband,  the  other  a  wild  and 
weak  young  poet,  logically  futile  and  physi- 
cally timid,  her  lover,  and  she  chooses  the 
former  because  he  has  more  weakness  and 
more  need  of  her.    Even  among  the  plain 


and  ringing  paradoxes  of  the  Shaw  play  this 
is  one  of  the  best  reversals  or  turnovers 
ever  effected.— G.  K.  Chesterton:  George 
Bernard  Shaw,  p.  120. 

Candida,  hero  and  title  of  a  satirical 
romance  (1758)  by  Voltaire,  a  yoimg 
man  of  ingenuous  mind  and  excellent 
principles  brought  up  in  the  castle  of 
Baron  von  Thunder-ten-tronch  by 
the  celebrated  Dr.  Pangloss  (q.v.), 
whose  theory  is  that  everything  is 
for  the  best  in  this  best  of  aU  possible 
worlds.  The  Baron  kicks  Candide 
out  of  the  castle  because  he  loves  and 
is  caught  kissing  the  fair  and  fat 
Cunegonde,  daughter  of  the  house, 
and  Candide  wanders  from  place  to 
place  in  this  best  of  all  possible 
worlds,  everywhere  receiving  fresh 
buffets  from  fortune,  imtil  at  last, 
after  all  sorts  of  mishaps,  he  and  his 
Cunegonde  and  Dr.  Pangloss  are 
reunited  in  Turkey  upon  a  modest 
farm  where  Candide  sententiously 
announces  his  own  philosophy  of 
life:  "  II  faut  cultiver  son  jardin  " 
("  one  must  cultivate  one's  garden  "). 
Goethe  put  the  same  idea  in  another 
form:  "  Do  the  duty  that  lies  nearest 
you." 

Candour,  Mrs.,  in  Sheridan's  com- 
edy, The  School  for  Scandal  (1777),  a 
typical  female  slanderer  and  back- 
biter. 

The  name  of  Mrs.  Candour  has  become 
one  of  those  formidable  bywords  which  have 
more  power  in  putting  folly  and  ill-nature 
out  of  countenance  than  whole  volumes  of 
the  wisest  remonstrance  and  reasoning. — 
Thomas  Moore,  Life  of  R.  B.  Sheridan. 

Cantwell,  Dr.,  the  English  Tartuffe. 
He  is  the  leading  character  in  Isaac 
Bickerstaflf's  comedy,  The  Hypocrite 
(1768),  which  is  founded  on  Molidre's 
Tartuffe.  Meek  in  appearance,  saintly 
by  mealy-mouthed  profession,  he 
makes  his  garb  of  holiness  a  cloak  for 
sensuality  and  greed  until  he  over- 
reaches himself  by  his  treachery 
toward  Lady  Lambert  and  her  daugh- 
ter and  is  arrested  as  a  swindler.  The 
character  has  none  of  the  finesse  or 
plausibility  of  Moli^re's  hero.  "  He 
is  a  sturdy  beggar  and  no  more," 
complains  Hazlitt;  "he  is  not  an 
impostor  but  a  bully.  There  is  not 
in  anything  that  he  says  or  does,  in 


Canty 


86  Carker 


his  looks,  words,  or  actions,  the  least 
reason  that  Sir  John  Lambert  should 
admit  him  into  his  house  or  friend- 
ship. ' '  Bickerstaffe's  comedy,  instead 
of  coming  directly  from  the  French, 
was  adapted  from  Gibber's  adapta- 
tion, The  Non-juror  (1717).  See 
Mawworm. 

Canty,  Tom,  in  Mark  Twain's 
romance.  The  Prince  and  the  Pauper 
(1881),  a  young  beggar  who  is  the 
physical  double  of  Edward,  Prince  of 
Wales,  son  of  Henry  VIII.  In  a 
boyish  freak  the  prince  and  he  change 
clothes,  the  attendants  fail  to  com- 
prehend the  situation,  Edward  is 
driven  out  to  wander  in  the  streets 
of  London,  while  Tom  is  installed  in 
his  place.  All  the  pauper's  vagaries 
and  solecisms  are  ascribed  to  a  sudden 
derangement  of  the  prince's  mind, 
and  the  mistake  is  not  cleared  up 
until  Tom  is  on  the  point  of  being 
crowned  as  Edward  VI.  The  real 
prince  turns  up  at  the  Cathedral  and 
proclaims  his  rights  just  as  the  crown 
is  being  placed  on  the  head  of  Tom, 
who  insists  on  changing  places  with 
the  beggarly  claimant,  though  the 
courtiers  are  loath  to  believe  that 
Tom  is  not  the  prince.  There  is  a 
likeness  in  the  plot  to  the  medieval 
legend  of  King  Robert  of  Sicily. 

Caponsacclu,  Giuseppe,  in  Brown- 
ing's poem,  The  Ring  and  the  Book^ 
the  chivalrous  priest,  canon  of  Arezzo, 
who  aided  Pompilia  in  her  flight  to 
Rome  from  the  tyranny  of  Coimt 
Guido.  All  Rome  is  divided  on  the 
question  whether  he  was  or  was  not, 
her  lover. 

Capulets,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy, 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  a  noble  family  in 
Verona  at  feud  with  the  Montagues. 
Romeo  was  a  Montague,  JuHet  a 
Gapulet,  hence  the  bloody  abyss  that 
separated  ^  the  lovers.  The  Italian 
names  which  Shakespeare  remodelled 
to  his  own  use  were  Gapelletti  and 
Montecchi  or  Monticoli,  two  rival 
families  whose  jealousies  disturbed 
the  peace  of  Verona  in  the  last  half 
of  the  thirteenth  and  first  half  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  The  familiar 
expression — "the  tomb  of  the  Capu- 
lets," was  invented  by  Burke,  who 


first  used  it  in  a  letter  to  Matthew 
Smith.  Shakespeare  makes  the  head 
of  the  Capulets  a  man  of  mingled 
mirth  and  wrath,  jovial  with  his 
friends,  irascible  and  vindictive  to 
his  enemies.  Lady  Gapulet  shares 
his  pride  and  his  hates,  but  has  no 
laughter  in  her  make-up. 

The  Lady  Capulet  comes  sweeping  by 
with  her  train  of  velvet,  her  black  hood,  her 
fan  and  her  rosary — the  very  beau-ideal  of 
a  proud  Italian  matron  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  whose  ofifer  to  poison  Romeo  in 
revenge  for  the  death  of  Tybalt  stamps  her 
with  one  very  characteristic  trait  of  the  age 
and  country.  Yet  she  loves  her  daughter, 
and  there  is  a  touch  of  remorseful  tenderness 
in  her  lamentation  over  her  which  adds  to 
our  impression  of  the  timid  softness  of  Juliet 
and  the  harsh  subjection  in  which  she  has 
been  kept. — Mrs.  Jameson:  Heroines  of 
Shakespeare's  Plays. 

Careless,  In  Sheridan's  comedy. 
The  School  for  Scandal  (1777),  one  of 
the  boon  companions  of  Charles 
Surface.  Ned  Careless,  in  CoUey 
Gibber's  Double  Dealer  (1700),  makes 
love  to  Lady  Plyant.  Another  Care- 
less in  Gibber's  Double  Gallant  is 
described  as  "a  fellow  that's  wise 
enough  to  be  but  half  in  love,  and 
makes  his  whole  life  a  studied  idle- 
ness." The  hero  of  Gibber's  Careless 
Husband  is  Sir  Charles  Easy  (q.v.). 

Cargill,  Rev.  Josiah,  in  Scott's 
novel,  St.  Ronans*  Well,  the  minister 
of  St.  Ronans,  a  mild,  melancholy, 
absented  man — ^pitied,  blamed,  loved 
or  laughed  at  alternately  by  his 
parishioners.  **  All  the  neighbor- 
hood," we  are  told,  *'  acknowledged 
Mr.  Gargill's  serious  and  devout  dis- 
charge of  his  ministerial  duties;  and 
the  poorer  parishioners  forgave  hi^ 
innocent  peculiarities  in  considera- 
tion of  his  unbounded  charity." 

Carker,  James,  in  Dickens's  Dom- 
bey  and  Son  (1846),  a  plausible  villain, 
business  manager  to  Mr.  Dombey, 
who  elopes  with  Dombey's  wife  and 
is  killed  in  a  railway  accident.  His 
chief  physical  pecuharity  is  a  set  of 
teeth  whose  glistening  whiteness  and 
regularity  are  "  quite  distressing." 
He  showed  his  teeth  whenever  he 
spoke  and  smiled  so  wide  a  smile  that 
"  there  was  something  in  it  like  the 
snarl  of  a  cat."     Enjo3dng  the  confi- 


Carlisle 


87 


Carton 


dence  of  his  employer  he  speculates 
on  his  own  account  and  amasses  a 
fortune.  A  sharp  contrast  to^  this 
whited  sepulchre  with  his  hypocritical 
subservience  to  his  employer  ^  is 
James's  brother  John,  who  having 
robbed  the  firm  in  his  thoughtless 
youth  and  been  forgiven  makes  resti- 
tution by  years  of  faithful  service. 
The  sister,  Harriet  Carker,  is  a  gentle 
and  beautiful  girl  who  marries  Mr. 
Morfin. 

Carlisle,  Lady,  in  Browning's  trag- 
edy, Strafford,  a  nonhistorical  person- 
age whom  the  poet  introduces^  in 
order  to  add  a  love  element.  He  him- 
self acknowledges  that  "  the  character 
of  Lady  CarHsle  in  the  play  is  wholly 
imaginary. 

Came,  Caryl,  in  Richard  D.  Black- 
more's  semi-historical  novel.  Spring- 
haven  (1887).  A  native  of  the  English 
village  of  Springhaven,  he  is  only  half 
EngHsh  by  descent  and  all  French  in 
sympathy.  Hence  he  is  selected  by 
Napoleon  to  prepare  the  way  for  his 
intended  descent  upon  the  English 
coast  in  1805. 

Came  owns  a  worthless  estate  and  ruined 
castle  close  by  Springhaven,  and  through 
him  general  misery  and  particular  tragedy 
fall  upon  the  httle  town.  He  is  as  cold- 
blooded and  ruthless  a  traitor  as  ever  sold 
his  birthright,  as  picturesque  a  villain  as 
ever  served  novelist  a  good  turn. — N.  Y. 
Nation,  May  19,  1887. 

Caroline,  consort  of  George  II,  fig- 
ures in  Walter  Scott's  novel.  The 
Heart  of  Midlothian,  as  Queen  Regent 
during  George's  absence  on  the  con- 
tinent in  1736 — the  time  of  the  Por- 
teous  riots.  She  is  painted  as  accom- 
plished, proud  but  just,  ready  at 
repairing  any  false  step  and  loving 
"  the  real  possession  of  power  rather 
than  the  show  of  it."  Though  her 
relations  with  the  Duke  of  Argyle 
were  strained,  she  received  his  pro- 
t^g^e,  Jeanie  Deans,  and  granted  her 
petition. 

Carpathian  Wizard,  so  Milton  styles 
jProteus  in  the  song  sung  by  Sabrina 
in  Comus: 

And  the  Carpathian  wizard's  hook. 

He  was  reputed  to  dwell  in  a  cave 
in  the  island  of  Carpathus,  and  he 


had  a  hook  because  he  was  the  shep- 
herd of  the  sea  calves. 

Carson,  Kit,  is  the  hero  of  Joaquin 
Miller's  poem,  Kit  Carson's  Ride. 
Kit  is  supposed  to  tell  the  storv  of 
how  on  his  wedding  day  he  and  his 
bride,  and  Revels  his  friend,  were 
compelled  to  flee  before  a  prairie  fire, 
how  they  got  entangled  in  a  herd 
of  affrighted  buffaloes,  how  Revels 
dropped  dead,  how  the  bride  suc- 
cumbed, and  how  he  himself  was 
borne  senseless  into  safety. 

Christopher  Carson  (1809-68),  bet- 
ter known  as  Kit,  was  a  famous  trap- 
per and  mountain  guide  in  the  Rocky- 
Mountains  and  the  adjacent  terri- 
tories. 

Carstone,  Richard,  in  Dickens's 
Bleak  House  (1853),  is,  with  his 
cousin  Ada  Clare  (later  his  wife),  a 
ward  in  Chancery.  Though  natu- 
rally of  a  carefree  and  sanguine  dis- 
position, he  is  driven  to  melancholy 
and  death  by  the  collapse  of  his 
expectations  when  the  Jamdyce  case 
is  finally  closed  and  the  whole  estate 
is  found  to  have  been  swallowed  up 
in  costs. 

Carter,  George  Fairfax,  hero  of  F. 
Hopkinson  Smith's  novel,  Colonel 
Carter,  of  Carter sville  (1896),  an  unre- 
constructed Virginia  gentleman. 

We  have  all  met  many  Virginia  types  in 
print,  but  this  one  has  a  distinct  difference 
from  the  rest  in  that  he  is  brought  down  to 
date  and  is  beheld  floating  in  rosy  stream 
clouds  of  railroad  schemes.  The  impossi- 
bility of  adjusting  the  street-raiment  of 
commerce  to  the  untrammelled  spirit  of  a 
Southern  chevalier  leads  to  a  hundred 
comicalities,  which  are  never  far  from  the 
pathetic  and  which  are  excellently  told. — 
N.  Y.  Nation,  June  11,  1891. 

Carton,  Sidney,  principal  character 
in  Dickens'  historical  romance  of  the 
French  Revolution,  A  Tale  of  Two 
Cities  (1859).  A  young  lawyer,  he 
has  wasted  his  talents  in  bohemian 
dissipation.  His  one  redeeming  trait 
is  his  pure  and  unselfish  love  for 
Lucie  Manette,  who  marries  Charles 
Damay.  Taking  advantage  of  his 
resemblance  to  Damay  he  substitutes 
himself  for  the  latter  in  prison.  As 
he  rides  to  his  death  none  but  the 
little  sewing  girl  in  the  tumbril  with 


Carvel 


88 


Casaubon 


him  knows  his  secret.  Mounting  the 
guillotine  he  has  a  vision  of  the  Paris 
and  France  of  the  future.  In  his 
heart  is  the  serenity  of  triumph:  '*  It 
is  a  far,  far  better  thing  that  I  do 
than  I  have  ever  done;  it  is  a  far,  far 
better  rest  that  I  go  to  than  I  have 
ever  known." 

Carvel,  Richard,  hero  and  title  of 
a  novel  (1899),  by  Winston  Church- 
hill,  whose  scene  is  laid  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic  before  and  during  the 
Revolutionary  period.  Richard  has 
been  brought  up  by  his  grandfather, 
Lionel  Carvel  of  Carvel  Hall,  Mary- 
land, as  the  heir  to  the  family  estates. 
His  fiery  advocacy  of  the  cause  of  the 
colonists  makes  it  easy  for  an  uncle, 
Grafton  Carvel,  to  plot  against  him 
in  the  interests  of  Grafton's  son 
Philip.  Richard  is  kidnapped  and 
smuggled  aboard  the  ^  pirate  slaver 
Black  Moll;  the  slaver  is  captured  by 
John  Paul,  afterwards  known  as  John 
Paul  Jones.  Paul  and  Richard  be- 
come great  friends  and  are  thrown 
into  the  society  of  the  most  important 
personages  in  London.  On  the  out- 
break of  the  war  Carvel  enlists  under 
Paul  Jones  and  is  in  the  great  naval 
fight  between  the  Bonhomme  Richard 
and  the  Serapis.  Peace  restores  him 
to  his  own  and  he  marries  Dorothy 
Manners  with  whom  he  has  been  in 
love  from  childhood. 

Casablanca,  titular  hero  of  a  short 
poem  (1798)  by  Mrs.  Felicia  Hemans, 
founded  upon  a  historical  episode. 
He  was  a  ten-year-old  lad  at  the  time 
he  so  stoutly  met  his  death.  His 
father,  Louis  Casabianca,  was  cap- 
tain of  the  Orient  y  the  flagship  of  the 
fleet  that  conveyed  Napoleon  and  his 
troops  to  Egypt  for  his  Nile  campaign. 
At  the  battle  of  Aboukir,  when  the 
fleet  was  attacked  by  the  English, 
Admiral  Brueys  was  killed,  and  the 
command  devolved  upon  Captain 
Casabianca.  The  Orient  was  struck 
and  took  fire,  but  he  remained  to  the 
last,  and  went  down  with  his  ship. 
His  ten-year-old  son  refused  to  leave 
the  ship,  and  also  perished. 

Of  course  it  was  an  act  of  sublime  obedi- 
ence in  Casabianca  to  remain  where  his 
father  had  told  him,  to  perish  in  the  flames, 


and  in  a  child  such  an  action  was  not  only 
magnificent,  but  perfectly  intelligible.  But 
had  he  possessed  the  mental  flexibility 
which  comes  with  maturer  years,  he  would 
probably  have  perceived  that  the  tremen- 
dous change  in  the  state  of  things  on  board 
the  Orient,  since  his  father's  order  was  given, 
virtually  cancelled  that  order,  and  restored 
to  him  his  freedom  of  action.  When  the 
order  was  given  the  vessel  was  intact  and 
in  good  fighting  condition,  and  it  was  pre- 
sumably for  some  useful  strategic  purpose 
that  he  was  stationed  at  his  post.  His 
father  was  alive  to  direct  the  movements 
which  the  occasion  required.     .     .     . 

The  last  thing  his  father  would  have 
desired  was  that  he  should  stay  to  perish  in 
the  final  explosion.  Instead  of  indulging  in 
that  series  of  appeals  to  the  wind  which  our 
poetess  has  emphasized  with  so  much 
pathos,  he  should  have  flung  himself  into 
the  waves,  and  endeavoured  to  save  a  life 
so  precious  to  his  family  and  to  France. — • 
Saturday  Review,  August,  22,  1874. 

Casamassima,  Princess,  in  Henry 
James's  novel  of  that  name  (1887), 
is  the  Miss  Isabella  Light  of  Roderick 
Hudson,  come  to  London  with  her 
beauty  and  splendor  to  forget  her 
hated  husband  in  semi-sincere  S3nm- 
pathy  with  cockney  socialists  and 
semi-personal  love-making  with  two 
of  the  handsomest  among  them. 

Casaubon,  Edward,  in  George 
Eliot '5  novel  of  English  provincial 
life,  Middlemarch  (1871-1872),  the 
first  husband  of  Dorothea  Brooke 
(q.v.),  a  dull,  dry,  dreary  pedant,  lean 
of  person,  with  blinking  eyes,  white 
moles  and  formal  phrases.  He  has 
labored  for  yeare  over  a  Key  to  all 
Mythologies  and  in  his  pursuit  of  gods 
and  goddesses  has  lost  all  clue  to  his 
fellow-men;  in  his  burro  wings  into 
the  past  has  loosened  all  hold  upon 
the  pleasures  of  the  present.  Solid 
Sir  James  Chettam  remarks  that  he 
is  a  man  with  no  good  red  blood  in 
his  veins.  *'  No,"  retorts  Mrs.  Cad- 
wallader.  "Somebody  put  a  drop 
under  a  magnifying  glass  and  it  was 
all  semicolons  and  parentheses. ' '  "De- 
termined to  correct  the  error  of  over- 
studiousness  by  marrying  a  young 
and  beautiful  wife  he  finds  her  in 
Dorothea  who  takes  him  at  his  own 
valuation  but  is  speedily  disillusion- 
ized. The  situation  is  not  without 
precedent  in  real  life — one  remembers 
Madame  de  Stael,  when  a  prodigy  of 
fifteen,   gravely    proposing    to    her 


Cass 


89 


Castlewood 


parents  that  she  should  marry  Gib- 
bon, as  fat  a  specimen  of  distinguished 
middle  Ufe  as  Casaubon  was  a  lean 
one.  Mark  Pattison  has  been  sug- 
gested as  the  possible  original  for  this 
character  and  it  is  a  curious  coin- 
cidence that  in  1875  he  wrote  a  biog- 
raphy of  Isaac  Casaubon. 

Mr.  P.  W.  H,  Myers  tells  the  story  of  how 
one  day  George  Eliot  and  her  husband  were 
making  good-humored  fun  over  the  mis- 
taken effusiveness  of  a  friend  who  insisted 
on  assuming  that  Mr.  Casauban  was  a 
portrait  of  Mr.  Lewes  and  on  condoling 
with  the  sad  experiences  which  had  taught 
the  gifted  authoress  of  Middlemarch  to 
depict  that  gloomy  man.  "And  there  was, 
indeed,  something  ludicrous,"  says  Mr. 
Myers,  "in  the  contrast  between  the  dreary 
pedant  of  the  novel  and  the  good-natured 
self -content  of  the  living  savant  who  stood 
acting  his  vivid  anecdotes  before  our 
eyes."  "But  from  whom,  then,"  said  a 
friend,  turning  to  Mrs.  Lewes,  *'did  you 
draw  Casaubon?"  With  a  humorous  solem- 
nity which  was  quite  in  earnest,  however, 
she  pointed  to  her  own  heart. — Walsh: 
Handy  Book  of  Literary  Curiosities,  p.  951. 

Cass,  Godfrey,  in  George  Eliot's 
novel,  Silas  Marner  (1861),  the 
father  of  the  little  girl  whom  Marner 
adopts;  whom  Cass  himself  had  dis- 
owned, and  who  disowns  him  later 
when  he  would  fain  reclaim  her  to 
comfort  his  childless  age. 

Cassio,  Michael,  in  Shakespeare's 
tragedy,  Othello,  the  hero's  lieutenant, 
a  young  and  handsome  Florentine, 
introduced  in  i,  2.  lago,  hating  him 
for  that  he  has  been  promoted  above 
himself,  implicates  him  in  his  plot 
against  Desdemona. 

Cassius,  Caius,  one  of  the  conspira- 
tors 'against  Caesar  (b.c.  44),  mar- 
ried to  Brutus's  sister  Junia,  is  intro- 
duced in  Shakespeare's  drama,  Julius 
Cassar,  1,2.  His  death  occurs  in  iv,  3, 

He  is  keen,  practical,  prompt, 
energetic,  severe  and  inexorable;  his 
hatred  of  tyranny  is  mingled  with 
envy  of  the  man  whose  life  he  had 
once  saved  and  for  whose  physical 
powers  he  feels  contempt,  and  yet 
who  seems  about  to  "  bestride  the 
narrow  world  like  a  Colossus."  A 
keen  politician,  he  knows  the  special 
means  to  employ  in  influencing  each 
of  the  confederates. 

Castara  (from  Latin  casta,  fern,  of 
castus,  chaste,  or  perhaps  casta  ara, 


sacred  altar),  a  poetical  name  under 
which  WilUam  Habington  (1605- 
1654)  celebrated  the  praises  of  Lucia, 
daughter  of  Lord  Powis,  whom  he 
married. 

Castlewood,  Francis  Esmond, 
fourth  Viscount  Castlewood,  in 
Thackeray's  novel,  Henry  Esmond, 
the  Lord  Castlewood  of  the  story, 
patron  of  Henry  and  first  husband 
of  Lady  Rachel.  A  good-natured 
profligate  who  neglects  his  wife  and 
children,  and  gambles  away  his  sub- 
stance, he  is  killed  in  a  duel  with  Lord 
Mohun,  whose  uninvited  attentions 
to  his  wife  he  resents. 

Castlewood,  Rachel,  Viscountess, 
the  wife  and  later  widow  of  the  fourth 
Viscount,  a  principal  character  in 
Thackeray's  Henry  Esmond,  the 
Lady  Castlewood  of  the  story,  who 
eventually  marries  the  hero,  though 
she  is  seven  years  his  senior.  As  the 
aged,  white-haired  but  still  lovely 
Rachel  Esmond  she  reappears  in  The 
Virginians. 

She  is  drawn  from  Mrs.  Jane  Oc- 
tavia  Brookfield,  wife  of  Rev.  William 
Brookfield  (who  himself  figures  in  a 
Punch  sketch.  The  Curate's  Walk,  as 
Rev.  Frank  Whitestock),  with  whom 
Thackeray  kept  up  a  correspondence 
that  has  found  its  way  into  print. 
Mrs.  Brookfield  survived  her  husband 
by  twenty  years. 

"Had  she  been  inclined  to  change  her 
state  and  move  in  a  higher  and  more  ex- 
clusive sphere,"  write  her  biographers,  "she 
had  several  opportunities  for  re-marrying, 
but  her  love  for  her  children  made  her  con- 
sider them,  and  she  concluded  to  devote  the 
rest  of  her  life'^to  them.  She  did  not  as  a 
widow  remain  in  retirement,"  but  continued 
to  enliven  the  company  of  her  old  friends, 
and  graciously  welcomed  the  new,  "always 
surprised  and  pleased  that  she  was  still 
sought  out  and  noticed." 

"The  distance  of  time,"  says  Hannay, 
"at  which  the  action  of  Esmond  goes  on, 
seems  to  have  acted  on  Thackeray's  imagi- 
nation like  a  stimulant,  for  there  is  not  only 
more  romance,  but  more  sentiment  in 
Esmond  than  in  his  other  fictions.  That  the 
hero,  after  having  been  the  lover  of  Beatrix, 
should  become  the  husband  of  her  mother, 
jars  on  the  feelings  of  some  of  his  admirers. 
But  it  would  be  well  worth  their  while  to 
study,  phase  by  phase,  the  admirable 
delicacy  with  which  Henry  Esmond's  attach- 
ment is  made  to  grow,  and  the  exquisite  art 
by  which  the  final  result  is  hinted  at."     ^ 


Caterina 


90 


Cedric 


Caterina,  the  heroine  of  Meyer- 
beer's opera,  L'Etoile  du  Nord  (The 
Star  of  the  North),  founded  upon  the 
historical  love  of  Catherine  for  her 
imperial  husband,  the  faithless  Czar 
Peter.  This  part  was  a  favorite  with 
Adelina  Patti,  because  no  other 
offered  her  more  variety. 

Those  who  wish  to  see  and  hear  Mdme. 
Patti  in  as  many  costumes  and  as  many 
characters  as  possible  cannot  do  better  than 
witness  the  performance  of  L'Etoile  du  Nord, 
with  Mdme.  Patti  assuming  turn  by  turn 
in  that  work  the  part  of  a  waiting-maid  at 
an  inn,  a  fortune-telling  gypsy,  a  young 
recruit,  a  sentinel,  a  young  lady  clothed  in 
melancholy  and  white  muslin,  and  finally  a 
princess,  sound  as  to  body  and  mind  and 
decked  in  robes  of  regal  splendoxir. — Pall 
Mall  Gazette. 

Catesby,  Monsignor,  in  Disraeli's 
Lothair  (1871),  the  handsome,  subtle 
and  clever  Roman  Cathohc  dignitary 
who  almost  succeeds  in  converting 
Lothair  to  the  Roman  communion. 
In  real  life  Monsignor  Capel,  from 
whom  the  portrait  is  drawn,  did  bring 
the  Marquis  of  Bute,  the  original  of 
Lothair,  into  the  fold. 

Cardinal  Grandison  is  mainly  founded 
upon  Cardinal  Manning  with  just  a  soup^on 
of  his  predecessor  in  the  See  of  Westminster, 
Cardinal  Wiseman.  Monsignor  Catesby  is 
drawn  direct  from  Monsignor  Capel.  In 
neither  case  did  Disraeli  take  any  pains  to 
conceal  the  fact  of  portraiture.  The  models 
are  unmistakably  revealed.  Indeed  by  a 
slip  of  the  pen  or  of  the  types  "Capel," 
instead  of  "Catesby,"  was  printed  in  the 
third  volume  of  the  first  edition. 

Mgr.  Capel  never  took  umbrage  at  the 
notoriety  he  had  acquired  through  Lothair. 
On  the  contrary,  he  revelled  in  it.  It  was 
his  great  stock  in  trade  for  a  while,  and 
finally  it  proved  his  temporary  ruin.  Folks, 
and  especially  the  women  folks,  were  more 
interested  in  Catesby  than  in  Capel,  and 
their  worship  of  the  real  man  was  largely 
compounded  of  admiration  for  the  fictitious 
character. — N.  Y.  Times. 

Cathay  (a  corruption  of  the  Tartar 
word  Khitai),  an  ancient  name  for 
China  said  to  have  been  introduced 
into  Europe  by  Marco  Polo,  the 
Venetian  traveller. 

Better  fifty  years  of  Europe  than  a  cycle  of 
Cathay. 

Tennyson:    Locksley  Hall. 

Caudle,  Mrs.  Margaret,  the  mono- 
logist  in  The  Curtain  Lectures,  by 
Douglas    Jerrold.      The    full-blown 


flower  of  nagging  womanhood,  she 
has  delivered  for  nearly  thirty  years 
a  nightly  lecture  between  the  hours 
of  II  P.M.  and  7  A.M.  to  her  husband, 
Joe  Caudle,  usually  in  rebuke  of  some 
dereliction  of  duty  on  his  part.  Jer- 
rold used  with  good  effect  a  new  trick 
of  humor  whereby  the  reader  is  left 
to  infer  what  the  hen-pecked,  sleepy 
husband  had  to  offer  in  his  attempted 
defence,  from  the  acerbity  of  the 
conjugal  retort  and  a  fresh  access  of 
grumbling.  The  term  "  curtain  lec- 
ture "  sometimes  credited  to  Jerrold 
is  at  least  as  old  as  Dryden: 

Besides  what  endless  brawls  by  wives  are 

bred 
The  curtain  lecture  makes  a  mournful  bed. 

Caxton,  Austin,  in  Bulwer  Lytton's 
novel,  The  Caxtons  (1849),  and  its 
sequels,  My  Novel  (1853)  and  What 
Will  He  Do  with  It?  (1858),  a  book- 
worm of  vast  learning  and  dreamy 
moods,  neglectful  of  his  own  affairs, 
who  yet  can  be  waked  up  to  unex- 
pected worldly  wisdom  in  the  manage- 
ment of  other  people's  affairs.  He  is 
engaged  on  a  great  book.  The  History 
of  Human  Error. 

Cazton,  Pisistratus,  son  of  the 
above,  a  bit  of  a  prig  but  manly,  good- 
hearted,  sensible,  who  returns  from 
Australia  with  funds  to  launch  his 
father's  magnum  opus.  ^  His  uncle, 
Captain  Roland  Caxton,  is  a  narrow- 
minded  man  of  robust  honor  and 
courage,  full  of  sentimental  affection 
for  the  ruined  ancestral  tower  and 
its  barren  acres.  Herbert  Caxton, 
Roland's  son,  of  gypsy  blood  on  his 
mother's  side,  early  turned  against 
his  father  by  maternal  complaints, 
goes  through  life  a  pariah,  but  even- 
tually works  out  his  own  salvation, 
repents  and  enters  the  army.  Not 
seeking  death,  but  knowing  that 
death  alone  can  redeem  his  errors,  he 
meets  it  bravely  when  it  comes  during 
a  great  victory. 

Cecilia,  heroine  of  Madame  D'Ar- 
blay's  novel  of  that  name  (1782). 

Cedric  of  Rotherwood,  in  Scott's 
historical  romance  Ivanhoe^  a  Saxon 
thane,  proud,  fierce,  jealous  and  irrit- 
able,   who   cherishes   the   dream   of 


Celadon 


91 


Cenci 


restoring  the  independence  of  his 
race  with  single-hearted  enthusiasm. 
He  disinherits  his  only  son  Wilfrid 
for  seeking  Rowena,  whom  he  had 
destined  for  Athelstane.  ^ 

Celadon,  a  shepherd  in  love  with 
Astree  (see  Astrea)  in  D'Urfy's 
prose  pastoral  of  that  name;  hence  a 
stock  name  for  a  lover  in  dramatic 
literature  and  pastoral  poetry.  Dry- 
den  confers  the  name  upon  the  hero 
of  his  comedy,  Secret  Love,  or  the 
Maiden  Queen,  a  witty,  inconstant 
gallant  who  marries  the  like-minded 
Florimel  on  the  understanding  that 
neither  shall  interfere  with  the 
other. 

In  Thomson's  The  Seasons:  Sum- 
ner (1627),  Celadon  is  a  shepherd 
betrothed  to  Amelia.^  A  lightning 
flash  strikes  her  dead  in  his  arms. 

Besides  its  purely  literary  use  the 
name  is  used  in  France  as  a  com- 
mon noun,  a  synonym  for  a  constant 
and  usually  a  platonic  lover.  Thus 
Gautier:  "Sais  tu  que  voild.  tantot 
cinq  mois  cinq  6temit6s,  que  je  suis 
le  celadon  en  pied  de  Mme.  Ros- 
ette?" 

Celestial  City,  in  Btmyan's  Pil- 
grim's Progress,  the  object  of  Chris- 
tian's pilgrimage — the  heavenly  Jeru- 
salem whose  glories  are  described  in 
the  Apocalypse.  Hawthorne,  in  his 
Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,  has  an 
exquisite  satire  entitled  The  Celestial 
City,  or  a  Modern  Pilgrim's  Progress 
in  which  the  luxurious  **  progress  " 
of  the  latter-day  Christian  is  com- 
pared with  the  trials  and  tribulations 
of  his  predecessor. 

Celestial  Empire,  in  Europe  and 
America,  a  popular  and  semi- 
humorous  name  for  China  roughly 
translating  the  Chinese  Tien  Chan 
(Heavenly  Dynasty),  meaning  the 
kingdom  ruled  over  by  a  heaven- 
appointed  dynasty. 

Celia,  the  name  given  by  Thomas 
Carew,  an  English  poet  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  to  his  lady-love, 
whose  real  name  is  unknown. 

Celia,  in  Shakespeare's  As  You 
Like  It,  a  cousin  of  Rosalind  and  her 
companion  in  the  forest  imder  the 
name  of  Aliena. 


As  You  Like  It  would  be  one  of  those 
works  which  prove,  as  Landor  said,  long 
since  the  falsehood  of  the  stale  axiom  that 
no  work  of  man's  can  be  perfect  were  it  not 
for  that  unlucky  slip  of  the  brush  which 
has  left  so  ugly  a  little  smear  in  one  comer 
of  the  canvas  as  the  betrothal  of  Oliver  to 
Celia;  though  with  all  reverence  to  a  great 
name  and  a  noble  memory  I  can  hardly 
think  that  matters  were  much  mended  in 
George  Sand's  adaptation  of  the  play  by 
the  transference  of  her  hand  to  Jaques. — 
Swinburne:  A  Study  of  Shakespeare 
(1880). 

Celimene,  in  Moli^re's  comedy,  Le 
Misanthrope  (1666),  a  heartless  flirt 
with  whom  Alceste  is  in  love,  until 
he  discovers  her  worthlessness  and 
flings  her  away.  There  is  another 
Celimene  in  Molidre's  Les  Precieuses 
Ridicules,  but  she  has  little  or  nothing 
to  do  with  either  action  or  dialogue. 
The  CeUmene  of  the  Misanthrope, 
on  the  other  hand,  both  by  word  and 
deed  adds  the  last  drop  to  the  bitter- 
ness that  brims  the  cup  of  the  dis- 
illusioned Alceste.  As  Agnes  is 
drawn  from  the  childwife  whom 
Moliere  had  taken  to  his  heart  at 
forty,  so  Celimene  is  drawn  from  the 
abandoned  but  beautiful  deceiver 
into  whom  that  wife  had  matured  in 
his  latter  days. 

It  is  said  that  this  strange  and  passionate 
play,  so  wonderfully  different  in  tone  from 
all  those  productions  which  we  think  of 
most  when  we  name  Moliere,  was  the  expres- 
sion of  his  own  wounded  and  outraged  feel- 
ings. When  betrayed  by  his  wife  and  sepa- 
rated from  her,  he  yet  had  to  undergo  the 
extraordinary  ordeal  of  meeting  the  beauti- 
ful creature  whom  he  loved  and  loathed,  as 
man  can  love  and  loathe  an  unfaithful 
woman — on  the  stage  and  acting  with  her 
in  that  sombre  travesty  of  their  own  spoiled 
existence,  he  the  melancholy,  proud  Alceste, 
and  she  the  brilliant,  false  Celimene. — 
Oliphant  and  Tarver:  Molihe. 

Cenci,  Beatrice  (i577-i599).  in 
real  life  was  one  of  a  dozen  infamous 
children  of  an  infamous  Roman, 
Francesco  Cenci  (i549-i598)»  the 
illegitimate  son  of  a  priest  and  a  miser 
of  great  wealth.  Harsh  and  tyranni- 
cal to  all  his  family,  he  treated 
Beatrice  with  especial  cruelty  on  dis- 
covering her  intrigue  with  one  of  his 
stewards.  There  is  no  evidence  that 
he  outraged  her,  as  legend  avers. 
Finally  Beatrice,  with  her  stepmother 
Lucrezia,    a    friend    of    the    family 


Cerdon 


92 


Charlotte 


named  Monsignor  Guerra  and  two  of 
her  brothers,  Giacomo  and  Bernardo, 
instigated  the  assassination  of  the 
father  by  hired  bravos.  Olimpio,  one 
of  these  bravos,  was  probably  Fran- 
cesco's lover.  Guerra  escaped;  the 
other  conspirators  were  arrested  and 
confessed  the  crime,  though  Beatrice 
denied  everything  until  repeated 
tortures  broke  her  spirit.  Beatrice 
and  Lucretia  were  beheaded,  Giacomo 
was  subjected  to  a  cruel  death,  but 
Bernardo,  on  account  of  youth,  was 
sentenced  only  to  imprisonment. 

Legend  has  amplified  vulgar  fact  into 
lurid  romance.  Beatrice  has  been  painted 
as  the  innocent  victim  of  an  unnatural 
father,  joining  with  other  members  of  her 
family  in  parricide  only  that  she  might 
escape  from  a  life  of  incest.  Francesco  has 
been  painted  as  a  monster  of  crime  and 
domestic  tyranny.  Such  is  the  story  pre- 
sented by  Shelley  in  his  poetical  tragedy, 
The  Cenci  (1819);  by  F.  D.  Guerrazzi  in  a 
prose  romance,  Beatrice  Cenci  (1872);  and 
by  numerous_  others.  A  famous  portrait  in 
the  Barberini  Palace  at  Rome,  long  attri- 
buted to  Guido  Reni,  won  for  Beatrice  the 
title  of  "The  Beautiful  Parricide."  Later 
researches  prove  that  she  was  not  beautiful 
and  that  the  portrait  was  not  of  her,  nor 
was  it  painted  by  Guido  Reni.  See  Edin- 
burgh Review,  January,  1879. 

Cerdon,  in  Butler's  satiric  poem, 
Hudihras,  i,  2,  the  boldest  leader  of 
the  rabble  which  overwhelms  vSir 
Hudibras  at  the  bearbaiting.  He  is 
said  to  have  been  drawn  from  Colonel 
Hewson,  a  one-eyed  soldier,  cobbler 
and  preacher,  unwearied  in  his  de- 
nunciations of  bearbaiting  and  other 
worldly  amusements. 

Chadband,  the  Reverend  Mr.,  In 
Dickens's  novel.  Bleak  House  (1853), 
a  bland  and  hypocritical  clergyman, 
attached  to  no  particular  denomina- 
tion, who  is  fond  of  describing  him- 
self as  a  vessel,  and  affects  contempt 
for  carnal  things,  but  is  shamelessly 
devoted  to  the  fleshpots  and  their 
possessors  or  distributers. 

Chanticleer  (Old  Fr.  Chantecler, 
from  chanter,  sing,  and  cler,  clear),  the 
name  of  the  cock  in  the  epic,  Reynard 
the  Fox.  Chaucer  took  the  same 
name  for  the  barnyard  hero  of  The 
Nun  Prieste's  Tale  in  his  Canterbury 
Tales.  More  recently  (1907)  Edmond 
Rostand  made  Chanticleer  the  titular 


hero  of  a  play  which  may  be  indebted 
for  here  and  there  a  hint  to  Chaucer 
but  is  more  evidently  built  around  an 
epigram  by  Mrs.  Poyser  in  George 
Eliot's  Adam  Bede.  "He  is  velly 
like  a  cock  that  thinks  the  sun  has 
risen  a'  purpose  to  hear  him  crow." 
Cf.  also  the  exquisite  lines  about 
the  lark  which  John  Lyly  introduces 
into  his  comedy,  Alexander  and  Cam- 
paspe. 

How  at  heaven's  gate  she  clapt  her  wings. 
The  mom  not  waking  till  she  sings. 

Character,  A.  Subject  of  a  poem 
in  Tennyson's  Juvenilia.  He  has 
been  identified  by  Hallam  Tennyson 
with  one  Sunderland,  "a  very  plausi- 
ble, parliament-like  and  self-satisfied 
speaker  at  the  Union  Debating 
Society  "  in  Cambridge  University. 
Grant  Duff,  in  Notes  from  a  Diary, 
says  that  Sunderland  was  "  a  most 
extraordinary  and  brilliant  person 
who  lost  his  reason,  and  ended,  I 
have  been  told,  in  believing  himself 
the  Almighty. 

Charicles,  hero  and  title  of  a  classi- 
cal romance  (1830)  by  W.  A.  Becker, 
written  to  illustrate  the  manners  and 
customs  of  Greece  under  Macedonian 
domination.  Charicles  is  introduced 
as  travelling  (b.c.  329)  from  Argos 
to  Corinth  on  his  way  to  Athens.  In 
the  latter  city  he  meets,  wooes  and 
marries  Cleobule,  a  virgin  widow  of 
barely  sixteen,  to  whom  the  aged 
Polycles,  her  husband  only  in  name, 
leaves  all  his  wealth. 

Charles  Xn  of  Sweden.  He  is  the 
hero  of  a  historical  drama  (1828)  by 
J.  R.  Planch6,  and  of  a  historical 
sketch  by  Voltaire  which,  though 
admirably  written,  has  some  of  the 
characteristics  of  romance.  In  The 
Vanity  of  Human  Wishes  (1749),  a 
poetical  satire.  Dr.  Johnson  give  a 
rapid  sketch  of  his  career,  concluding 
with  the  famous  couplet: 

He  left  the  name  at  which  the  world  grew 

pale 
To  point  a  moral  or  adorn  a  tale. 

Charlotte,  heroine  of  George  Lillo's 
domestic  tragedy.  Fatal  Curiosity 
(1736),  the  betrothed  of  young  Wil- 


Chamian 


93 


Chester 


mot  (q.v.).  She  remains  faithful  to 
his  memory  after  his  supposed  loss 
at  sea  and  is  the  only  one  to  recognize 
him  on  his  return. 

Charmian,  in  Shakespeare's  Antony 
and  Cleopatra,  an  amiable  nonentity 
attendant  on  Cleopatra,  who  acts  as 
a  foil  to  that  fiery  queen.  After 
Cleopatra's  death  she  applied  one  of 
the  asps  to  her  own  arm  and  fell 
dead  when  the  Roman  soldiers  en- 
tered the  room. 

Charyllis,  in  Spenser's  pastoral 
poem,  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home 
Again  (1594),  is  readily  identified 
with  Anne,  Lady  Compton,  fifth  of 
the  six  daughters  of  Sir  John  Spenser 
of  Althorpe,  whom  Spenser  had 
already  complimented  by  dedicating 
to  her  his  satirical  fable,  Mother  Hub- 
bard's Tale.  Spenser  claims  kinship 
with  her  in  these  lines: 

No  less  praiseworthy  are  the  sisters  three. 
The  honor  of  the  noble  family 
Of  which  I  meanest  boast  myself  to  be; 
Phyllis,  Charyllis  and  sweet  Amaryllis; 
Phyllis  the  fair  is  eldest  of  the  three. 
The  next  to  her  is  botmtiful  Charyllis. 

Chastelard,  hero  of  Swinbiirne's 
tragedy  of  that  name,  was  a  historical 
character,  a  gentleman  of  Dauphiny, 
who  fell  in  love  with  Mary,  Queen  of 
Scots,  was  discovered  in  her  bedroom 
and  expiated  his  crime  or  his  mis- 
fortune on  the  scaffold. 

Chastelard  himself,  though  drawn  with 
complete  delicacy  and  finish,  is  in  truth 
only  a  subordinate  person  in  the  play,  and 
is  almost  commonplace  in  comparison  with 
his  mistress.  Mr.  Swinburne  presumed  that 
the  figure  of  a  passionate  lover,  full  of  gra- 
cious courtesy  and  gentle  knightly  virtues 
and  unbounded  devotion,  was  so  familiar  as 
to  be  scarcely  worthy  the  foremost  place 
on  his  canvas.  This  is  assigned  to  the 
beautiful,  inhuman,  bright  Mary  Stuart, 
whose  character  he  has  conceived  with 
Inexhaustible  subtlety  and  depth,  and  repre- 
sented with  a  rarely  equalled  perfection  of 
light  and  colour  and  fire. — Saturday  Review. 

Chattan,  Clan,  in  Scott's  novel, 
The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth,  a  Highland 
clan  whose  rivalry  with  Clan  Quhele 
tore  the  country  to  pieces.  At  the 
suggestion  of  King  Robert  III,  a 
meeting  was  arranged  on  the  North 
Inch  of  Perth  between  thirty  picked 
warriors  of  each  clan.    After  a  terrific 


combat  only  twelve  of  the  original 
combatants  survived. 

Chauvin,  in  Scribe's  Soldat  Labour^ 
eux,  a  veteran  of  the  Napoleonic  wars, 
with  unbounded  admiration  for  his 
former  chief  and  blind  idolatry  of  all 
that  pertains  to  him. 

Cheeryble,  Brothers  (Charles  and 
Edwin),  in  Dickens's  novel,  Nicholas 
Nickleby  (1838),  twin  brothers,  part- 
ners in  business,  the  benefactors  and 
employers  of  Nicholas.  In  their 
large-hearted  generosity  and  noble 
charity  they  are  said  to  have  been 
modelled  on  the  Brothers  Grant, 
cotton-mill  owners  of  Manchester, 
England.  In  the  original  preface 
Dickens  said  that  they  were  copied 
from  life  and  that  "  their  liberal 
charity,  their  singleness  of  heart, 
their  nobleness  of  nature,  and  their 
unbounded  benevolence  are  no  crea- 
tions of  the  author's  brain."  In  a 
later  edition  he  added: 

If  I  were  to  attempt  to  sum  up  the  hun- 
dreds of  letters  from  all  sorts  of  people,  in 
all  sorts  of  latitudes  and  climates,  to  which 
this  unlucky  paragraph  has  since  given  rise, 
I  should  get  into  an  arithmetical  difiiculty 
from  which  I  should  not  readily  extricate 
myself.  Sufl&ce  it  to  say  that  I  believe  the 
applications  for  loans,  gifts,  and  offices  of 
profit  that  I  have  been  requested  to  forward 
to  the  originals  of  the  Brothers  Cheeryble 
(with  whom  I  never  exchanged  any  com- 
munication in  my  life)  would  have  exhausted 
the  combined  patronage  of  all  the  Lord 
Chancellors  since  the  accession  of  the  House 
of  Brunswick,  and  would  have  broken  the 
rest  of  the  Bank  of  England. 

Cheese,  Rev.   Cream,  in  G.   W. 

Curtis's  Satire,  The  Potiphar  Papers 
(1856),  a  high  church  Episcopalian 
clergyman,  finnicky,  effeminate,  ultra 
refined  and  deeply  versed  in  all  the 
trivialities  of  religion,  who  gravely 
advises  Mrs.  Potiphar  as  to  the  color 
of  the  cover  of  her  prayer  book. 

Cherubim,  Don,  the  titular  hero 
in  Le  Sage's  novel.  The  Bachelor  of 
Salamanca,  who  is  interested  in  all 
varieties  of  life  and  character. 

Chester,  Emily,  heroine  and  title 
of  a  novel  by  A.  Moncure  Seemuller 
(1864).  It  is  Emily's  misfortune  to 
become  in  her  early  life  an  object  of 
passionate  devotion  to  a  man  for 
whom  she  feels  intellectual  sympathy. 


Chester 


94 


Chowne 


but  physical  repulsion.  At  a  time  of 
weakness  and  prostration  she  marries 
him  but,  with  renewed  strength,  this 
feeling  of  repulsion  returns  with  added 
force  and  continues  imtil  her  death. 

Chester,  Sir  John,  in  Dickens's 
Barnaby   Rudge    (1841),   an   elegant 

fentleman,  punctiliously  polite  but 
eartless  and  unprincipled,  evidently 
modelled  upon  the  Lord  Chesterfield 
of  history.  He  seeks  unsuccessfully 
to  break  off  a  match  between  his  son 
Edward  and  Emma  Havedale  and  is 
killed  in  a  duel  with  that  lady's  father, 
Geoffrey  Havedale. 

Chettam,  Sir  James,  in  George 
Eliot's  novel>  Middlemarch,  an  easy- 
going, amiable  baronet,  the  lover  and 
eventually  the  husband  of  CeUa 
Brooke. 

Cheyne,  Harvey  N.,  hero  of  Cap- 
tains Courageous,  a  Story  of  the  Grand 
Banks,  by  Rudyard  KipHng  (1897). 
A  selfish  young  brute,  the  spoiled 
child  of  an  American  millionaire, 
Harvey  is  washed  overboard  from  a 
big  Atlantic  liner  and  is  rescued  by  a 
Gloucester  fishing  schooner.  Disko 
Troop,  the  skipper,  scoffs  at  the  boy's 
tale  of  his  father's  wealth  and  im- 
portance and  sets  him  to  hard  work 
on  the  schooner.  The  change  from 
a  petted  hot-air  life  to  the  rough  and 
tumble  of  his  new  environment  proves 
the  saving  of  Harvey.  When  the 
season's  end  restores  him  to  his 
parents  he  has  become  docile,  self- 
reliant,  well  disciplined  and  physically 
fit. 

Chickweed,  Conkey,  sometimes 
known  as  "  Nosey,"  in  Dickens's 
Oliver  Twist,  a  thief  who  for  a  long 
time  evaded  detection  by  helping  the 
police  to  chase  innocent  men. 

Childe  Harold.  See  Harold, 
Childe. 

Chillingly,  Kenelm,  hero  of  Bulwer- 
Lytton's  novel,  Kenelm  Chillingly, 
His  Adventures  and  Opinions  (1873), 
is  the  long-prayed-for  heir  to  a  noble 
family,  whom  he  early  alarms  by  his 
precocity  and  singularity.  After 
graduating  from  Cambridge  he  leaves 
home  in  search  of  adventures,  but 
periodically  returns  there  and  is  ever 
welcome  to  his  family  and  society, 


which  is  attracted  by  his  charm, 
piqued  by  his  eccentricities,  and 
worshipful  of  his  wealth  and  rank. 
With  the  temperament  of  the  idealist 
Kenelm  possesses  a  face  and  figure 
ot  unusual  beauty,  perfect  health, 
and  considerable  skill  in  athletic 
exercises. 

Chillingworth,  Roger,  in  Haw- 
thorne's The  Scarlet  Letter  (1850),  a 
physician,  husband  to  Hester  Prynne. 
Of  cold,  intellectual  temperament, 
he  is  proud,  cunning  and  vindictive. 
Finding  that  his  wife  has  wronged 
him,  and  suspecting  the  Rev.  Arthtu" 
Dimmesdale  as  her  accomplice,  he 
attaches  himself  to  the  latter,  ostensi- 
bly to  watch  over  his  health,  but  in 
reality^  to  detect  his  secret  and  gloat 
over  his  tortures. 

Chingachcook,  an  Indian  chief, 
called,  by  the  French,  Le  Gros  Ser- 
pent (the  Big  Serpent),  who  is  promi- 
nent as  a  friend  of  Natty  Bumpo  in 
four  of  Cooper's  novels:  The  Deer- 
slayer,  The  Pathfinder^  The  Last  of 
the  MohicanSy  and  The  Pioneer. 

Chingachcook,  with  Uncas  to  supplement 
him,  is  the  ideal  Indian — grave,  silent,  acute, 
self-contained,  sufficiently  lofty-minded  to 
take  in  the  greatness  of  the  Indian's  past, 
and  sufficiently  far-sighted  to  see  the  hope- 
lessness of  his  future — with  nobility  of  soul 
enough  to  grasp  the  'white  man's  virtues, 
and  with  inherited  wildness  enough  to  keep 
him  true  to  the  instincts  of  his  own  race. 
Probably  at  his  first  appearance,  in  The 
Pioneers,  this  hero  was  a  study  from  life. 
Afterward,  whan  Cooper  began  to  present 
him  in  youth  and  manhood,  the  character 
was  idealized;  but  the  ideal  is  a  noble  one, 
worthy  to  stand  for  the  heights  of  the  savage 
nature — a  god-send  to  the  later  romancers, 
who  have  never  been  able  to  escape  from 
him.  Chingachcook  appears  at  his  best, 
perhaps,  but  under  another  name,  in  The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans. — The  Native  Element 
in  Fiction.     American  Century,  vol.  28. 

Chowne,  Parson  Stoyle,  in  Black- 
more's  novel.  The  Maid  of  Sker,  a 
man  of  family,  a  clergyman  and  a 
justice  of  the  peace,  but  withal  a  boor 
and  bully,  the  terror  of  his  parish, 
who  kidnaps  the  two  grandchildren 
of  Sir  Philip  Bampfylde.  Chowne 
has  been  identified  with  John  Froude, 
Vicar  of  Knowstone. 

One  of  the  worst  specimens  of  his  class 
was  the  Rev.  John  Froude,  Vicar  of  Know- 
stone,  the  original  of  Parson  Chowne    .    .    . 


Chrichton 


95 


Christian 


He  came  of  gentle  birth,  was  soured  and 
cheated  in  his  younger  days,  and  then  his 
hand  was  turned  against  every  man,  and  he 
ruled  the  countryside  with  the  power  of  a 
malignant  fiend.  Froude  had  at  his  beck 
and  call  a  set  of  young  farmers  and  grooms 
who,  controlled  by  fear  or  for  sake  of  reward, 
were  ever  ready  to  do  his  bidding.  The 
novelist  tells  of  a  race  of  naked  savages  who 
lived  not  far  from  the  rectory,  and  were 
sent  on  errands  of  vengeance  and  to  terrify 
the  neighbourhood.  Chowne  fed  them  with 
the  refuse  of  his  hounds'  food  and  entirely 
controlled  them,  treating  them  much  in  the 
same  way  as  he  did  his  dogs.  But  this  part 
of  the  story  is  imaginary.  It  was  said  that 
if  he  had  turned  his  talents  to  good  account 
he  might  even  have  been  a  bishop  if  he  had 
chosen.  For  this,  says  the  author  of  The 
Maid  of  Sker,  he  possessed  some  qualifica- 
tions, "for  his  choicest  pleasure  was  found 
in  tormenting  his  fellow-parsons." — P.  H. 
Ditchfield:    The  Old-Time  Parson,  p.  299. 

Chrichton,  Admirable,  the  familiar 
name  for  James  Chrichton  (1551- 
1573).  a  Scotch  youth  of  extraordin- 
ary beauty,  brilliancy  and  versatility. 
As  a  boy  of  distinguished  birth,  he 
was  the  fellow  pupil,  under  private 
tutors,  of  James  VI  of  Scotland,  who 
become  James  I  of  England.  Later 
he  was  educated  at  Perth  and  at 
Edinburgh.  At  seventeen  his  intel- 
lect was  ftdly  developed,  and  he  was 
reported  to  be  master  of  Latin, 
Greek,  Hebrew,  Chaldaic,  Italian, 
Spanish,  French,  Flemish,  German, 
Scottish  and  English.  His  memory 
was  such  that  he  could  repeat,  with- 
out an  error,  whatever  he  had  once 
heard.  He  was  no  less  skilled  in 
athletic  than  in  scholarly  directions. 
As  a  fencer,  none  could  rival  him,  and 
his  horsemanship  was  most  accom- 
plished. Nor  did  any  troublesome 
modesty  obscure  his  attainments. 
He  is  said  to  have  given  proof  of  his 
precocity  at  Paris  by  issuing  placards 
announcing  that  in  six  weeks  he 
would  present  himself  at  the  College 
of  Navarre  to  answer  orally  in  any 
one  of  twelve  languages  whatever 
question  might  be  proposed  to  him 
"in  any  science — liberal  art,  discipline 
or  faculty,  whether  practical  or  theo- 
retical." After  acquitting  himself 
admirably  before  the  crowded  audi- 
ence that  assembled  in  answer  to  this 
challenge,  he  was  victorious  next  day 
in  a  spectacular  tilting  match  at  the 
Louvre.  Chrichton  himself  later  wrote 


a  satiric  comedy  and  played  the  prin- 
cipal parts  therein.  He  was  a  hand- 
some youth,  save  for  a  deforming  red 
mark  on  his  right  cheek,  and  as  grace- 
ful as  he  was  leame<^.  Like  all  such 
prodigies,  though,  he  died  young, 
being  only  two  and  twenty  when  he 
passed  away  at  Mantua  in  the  height 
of  his  career. 

He  is  the  hero  of  a  novel  by  Harri- 
son Ainsworth  which  was  dramatized 
in  1837;  of  a  drama  (1820)  in  which 
Kean  made  a  hit  by  his  imitations  of 
actors  and  exploits  in  fencing,  music, 
etc.,  and  of  a  "  fantasy  "  by  J.  M. 
Barrie  (1902). 

Christabel,  heroine  of  a  poetical 
fragment  of  that  name  (18 16),  a 
weird  tale  of  mystic  and  haunting 
melody  by  S.  T.  Coleridge.  Christa- 
bel, the  gentle  and  pious  daughter  of 
Sir  Leoline,  is  induced  by  a  gentle 
but  powerful  spell  to  introduce  into 
her  father's  castle  a  lady,  **  beautiful 
exceedingly,"  who  calls  herself  Lady 
Geraldine,  biit  is  evidently  of  diaboli- 
cal origin.  The  fragment  breaks  off 
before  the  secret  of  her  identity  is 
revealed. 

The  poem  is  a  romance  of  Christianity,  a 
legend  of  sainthood.  The  heroine  is  not 
only  the  lovely  but  the  holy  Christabel. 
For  no  fault  of  hers,  but  rather  for  her 
virtues,  are  the  powers  of  evil  raised  against 
her;  and  one  of  the  most  subtle  and  wonder- 
ful touches  of  truth  in  the  tale  is  the  ignor- 
ance of  her  innocence — her  want  of  any 
knowledge  or  experience  which  can  explain 
to  her  what  the  evil  is,  or  how  to  deal  with 
it.  The  witch  Geraldine  has  all  the  foul 
wisdom  of  her  wickedness  to  help  her — her 
sorceries,  her  supernatural  knowledge,  her 
spells  and  cunning.  But  Christabel  has 
nothing  but  her  purity,  and  stands  defence- 
less as  a  lamb,  not  even  knowing  where  the 
danger  is  to  come  from;  exposed  at  every 
point  in  her  simplicity,  and  paralysed,  not 
instructed,  by  the  first  gleam  of  bewildering 
acquaintance  with  evil. — Blackwood's  Maga- 
zine, 

Christian,  hero  of  Bunyan's  alle- 
gory, The  Pilgrim's  Progress  from  this 
world  to  that  which  is  to  come  (1678). 
Awakened  to  the  consciousness  of  sin, 
Christian  flees  alone  from  the  City 
of  Destruction,  after  having  vainly 
sought  to  make  his  wife  and  children 
accompany  him. 

This  concludes  Part  I.    In  Part  II 


Christian  II 


96 


Chuzzlewit 


his  wife  and  family  travel  the  same 
path.    See  Christiana. 

The  Pilgrim,  though  In  a  Puritan  dress, 
is  a  genuine  man.  His  experience  is  so 
truly  human  experience  that  Christians  of 
every  persuasion  can  identify  themselves 
with  him;  and  even  those  who  regard 
Christianity  itself  as  but  a  natural  out- 
growth of  the  conscience  and  intellect,  and 
yet  desire  to  live  nobly  and  make  the  best 
of  themselves,  can  recognize  familiar  foot- 
prints in  every  step  of  Christian's  journey. — 
J.  A.  Froude. 


Christian  11,  King  of  Illyria,  in 
Daudet's  Kings  in  Exile  (1880),  is  a 
portrait  of  Francis  II,  the  last  king 
of  Naples,  who  lost  his  throne  in 
i860.  He  is  painted  as  an  easy-going, 
pleasure-loving  youth,  without  self- 
respect  or  enthusiasm,  who  much 
prefers  the  easy  joys  he  finds  in  Paris 
to  the  cares  of  ruling  a  remote  king- 
dom. His  queen  is  exactly  the  oppo- 
site. She  earnestly  desires  that  her 
husband  or  her  son  may  be  restored 
to  the  throne  of  his  ancestors.  She 
believes  fully  in  the  divine  right  of 
kings.  She  chafes  under  exile. 
Though  indifferent  to  her  husband, 
save  as  the  possible  occupant  of  a 
throne,  her  life  is  spent  not  so  much 
in  forgiving  as  in  trying  to  hide  and 
condone  his  villainies. 

Christian,  Edward,  alias  Dick 
Ganlesse  and  Simon  Canter,  in 
Scott's  novel,  Peveril  of  the  Peak 
(1823),  a  conspirator  false  to  every- 
body. Educated  as  a  Puritan  he 
retained  the  confidence  of  his  people 
by  a  resourceful  hypocrisy  while 
acting  as  "a.  sagacious,  artful  and 
cool-headed  instrument  of  Bucking- 
ham, the  father  of  Fenella,  whom  he 
had  trained  as  an  instrument^  of  his 
fiendish  vengeance.  Scott,  in  the 
introduction  written  in  1831,  explains 
that  he  is  a  mere  creature  of  the 
imagination,  though  he  makes  him 
the  brother  to  a  historic  character, 
William  Christian.  Unfortunately  he 
learned  too  late  that  William  did 
have  a  brother  of  the  name  of 
Edward.  *'  As  I  was  not  aware,"  says 
Scott,  **  that  such  a  person  had  ex- 
isted, I  could  hardly  be  said  to  have 
traduced  his  character." 


Christian,     Colonel     William,     in 

Scott's  novel,  Peveril  of  the  Peak^ 
brother  of  Edward.  For  many  years 
he  sacrifices  his  own  Puritanical 
conscience  in  the  interest  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Countess  of  Derby, 
but  finally  revolts  and  yields  up  the 
Isle  of  Man  to  the  ParHamentary 
army.  When  the  Restoration  re- 
places the  Countess  in  the  sovereignty 
of  the  island  he  is  shot  as  a  traitor. 

Christiana,  in  the  second  part  of 
Bimyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress  (1684), 
who,  imder  the  guidance  of  Mr.  Great 
Heart,  sets  out  with  her  children  to 
rejoin  her  husband  when  she  hears  of 
his  safe  arrival  in  the  Celestial  City. 

Chrononhotonthologos,  a  pompous 
character  in  a  burlesque  tragedy  of 
the  same  name  by  Henry  Carey. 

Chrysal,  the  feigned  author  of 
Chrysal,  or  Adventures  of  a  Guinea 
(1760),  a  satirical  novel  by  Charles 
Johnstone.  Chrysal,  i.e..  Golden,  is 
the  spirit  inhabiting  a  guinea  and 
tells  its  own  tale,  which  necessarily 
included  the  adventures  of  those  into 
whose  possession  it  comes  for  the 
time  being. 

Chucks,  in  Captain  Marryat's 
novel  of  naval  life  afloat  and  ashore, 
Peter  Simple  (1833),  the  boatswain 
under  Captain  Savage. 

We  have  not  the  least  doubt  that  there 
were  originals  for  most  of  his  characters, 
serious  and  comic,  including  the  ever- 
delightful  Chucks,  and  his  brother  warrant 
officer,  the  carpenter,  who  held  that  every- 
thing taking  place  around  him  had  taken 
place  just  27,672  years  before,  and  would 
take  place  just  27,672  years  afterwards.  A 
man-of-war,  in  days  when  men-of-war  were 
sometimes  a  whole  year  without  casting 
anchor,  contained  as  many  queer  animals  as 
Noah's  Ark. — Pall  Mall  Budget. 

Chuzzlewit,  Jonas,  Martin's  cousin, 
who  with  Mr.  Seth  Pecksniff  plots 
his' undoing,  is  a  sly,  cunning,  ignorant 
young  man  whose  rule  of  life  is, 
"  Do  other  men  for  they  would  do 
you."  He  is  detected  in  an  unsuccess- 
ful attempt  to  poison  his  own  father 
who  dies  of  a  broken  heart,  murders 
Montague  Tigg,  who  had  black- 
mailed him  in  connection  with  the 
poisoning,  and  when  arrested  poisons 
himself  on  the  way  to  prison. 


Chuzzlewit 


97 


Clare 


Jonas  Chuzzlewit  has  his  place  of  emi- 
nence forever  among  the  most  memorable 
types  of  living  and  breathing  wickedness 
that  ever  were  stamped  and  branded  with 
Immortality  by  the  mdignant  genius  of  a 
great  and  unrelenting  master.  Neither  Van- 
trin  nor  Th6nardier  has  more  of  evil  and  of 
deathless  life  in  him. — Swinburne:  Charles 
Dickens,  p.  30. 

Chuzzlewit,  Martin,  hero  of  a  novel 
of  that  name  (1843)  by  Charles 
Dickens.  Being  cast  off  by  a  grand- 
father bearing  the  same  name,  be- 
cause of  his  love  for  Mary  Graham, 
he  emigrates  to  the  United  States 
and  invests  his  Httle  all  in  a  real  estate 
deal  in  Eden,  a  place  described  in 
the  advertisements  as  justifying  its 
name,  but  which  turns  out  on  reach- 
ing it  to  be  simply  a  dozen  log  cabins 
situated  in  a  malarious  swamp.  He 
returns  to  England  completely  dis- 
illusioned with  America  and  the 
Americans. 

Cinq-Mars,  Henri,  Marquis  de 
(1620-1642),  a  French  coturtier  who 
began  life  as  a  pTot6g6  of  Cardinal 
Richelieu  (q.v.),  but  turned  against 
him  because  Richelieu  discounte- 
nanced his  love  for  Maria  de  Gon- 
zaga;  was  detected  in  a  conspiracy, 
and,  with  his  friend  and  fellow  plotter, 
De  Thou,  was  beheaded  at  Lyons. 
He  is  the  hero  of  a  historical  novel  by 
Alfred  de  Vigny:  Cinq- Mars,  ou  une 
Conjuration  sous  Louis  XIII  (1826). 
and  of  an  opera  by  Gotmod  founded 
on  the  novel  (1877). 

Circumlocution  Office,  a  term  in- 
vented by  Dickens  in  Little  Dorrit 
(1855)  to  satirize  the  red  tape  and 
consequent  waste  of  time  and  money 
in  British  public  offices.  "  It  was 
equally  impossible  to  do  the  plainest 
right  and  to  undo  the  plainest  wrong, 
without  the  express  authority  of  the 
Circumlocution  Office.  If  another 
Gunpowder  Plot  had  been  discovered 
half  an  hour  before  the  lighting  of  the 
match,  nobody  would  have  been 
justified  in  saving  the  Parhament 
until  there  had  been  a  score  of  boards, 
half  a  bushel  of  minutes,  several  sacks 
of  official  memoranda,  and  a  family 
vault  full  of  imgrammatical  corre- 
spondence on  the  part  of  the  Circtun- 
locution  Office."     In  short,  "what- 


ever was  required  to  be  done,  the 
Circumlocution  Office  was  beforehand 
with  all  the  public  departments  in  the 
art  of  perceiving — How  Not  to  do 
IT."    (Chapter  xxvii.) 

Citizen  of  the  World,  the  epithet 
which  Goldsmith  bestows  upon  the 
imaginary  author  of  the  letters  pub- 
lished collectively  in  1762  under  that 
title.  He  is  a  philosophical  Chinaman 
tarrying  in  London,  who  writes  home 
to  his  friends  in  the  Orient  his  obser- 
vations on  occidental  morals,  manners 
and  customs.  The  epithet  had 
already  been  applied  by  one  of  the 
characters  in  Sir  Charles  Grandison 
(1754)  to  the  hero  of  that  novel. 

The  phrase,  "a  Citizen  of  the  World," 
is  as  old  as  Bacon's  Essays;  but  it  is  inter- 
esting to  find  it  in  Richardson  only  a  few 
years  before  Goldsmith  made  it  the  title  of 
his  collected  Chinese  Letters.  Sir  Charles 
Grandison,  says  Lucy  Selby,  "is,  in  the 
noblest  sense,  a  Citizen  of  the  World." — 
Austin  Dobson:  Samuel  Richardson,^,  163. 

Claes,  Balthazar,  in  Balzac's  novel 
of  La  Recherche  de  VAbsolu  (1834), 
translated  into  English  as  The  Alka- 
hest, is  a  wealthy  chemist  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  nineteenth  centtuy,  the 
head  of  the  leading  family  in  the 
Flemish  town  of  Douai.  His  Hfe 
dream  is  to  solve  the  mystery  of 
matter — the  secret  of  the  Absoliite. 
Sacrificing  everything  in  his  devotion 
to  chemical  analysis  he  dies  heart- 
broken and  defeated,  a  tragic  figure, 
touching  in  its  pathos  and  dignified 
even  in  its  fall. 

Clarchen,  heroine  of  Goethe's  his- 
torical tragedy,  Egmont,  a  bright, 
winsome  and  loyal  girl,  devoted  to 
the  titular  hero,  from  whom  Scott 
has  borrowed  some  of  the  traits  of 
his  Amy  Robsart. 

Clare,  Angel,  in  Thomas  Hardy*s 
novel,  Tess  of  the  D'Urbevilles,  the 
yoimger  son  of  Rev.  James  Clare, 
Vicar  of  Emminister.  Intended  for 
the  church,  he  develops  free-thinking 
tendencies,  though  retaining  a  bigoted 
belief  in  social  conventions.  He  mar- 
ries Tess  but  cannot  forgive  her  past 
nor  her  unintentional  concealment 
of  the  facts  and  leaves  her  on  the 
wedding  night,  a  wife  only  in  name. 


Clarence 


Claudio 


Clarence  George,  Duke,  son  of  the 
Duke  of  York,  introduced  in  Shakes- 
peare's ///  Henry  FJ  and  also  in 
Richard  III,  where  his  imprisonment 
in  the  Tower  ends  in  secret  murder 
(i,  4).  His  ghost  appears  to  Richard 
(v,  3).  His  imstable  character  de- 
serves the  Shakespearean  epithets 
"  false,  fleeting,  perjured  Clarence." 

Clari,  heroine  of  an  opera  by  J. 
Howard  Payne  and  Sir  Henry  Bishop 
entitled  Clari,  or  the  Maid  of  Milan 
(1823).  The  Duke  of  Milan,  with 
evil  intentions,  induces  Clari  to  leave 
her  home  under  promise  of  marriage; 
she  is  warned  by  a  play  acted  before 
her  and  escapes.  The  Duke  repeats 
his  offer  with  intentions  now  of  the 
most  unexceptionable;  she  believes 
him,  returns,  and  they  are  married. 
This  opera  is  only  famous  in  dramatic 
history  because  the  melody  of  Home 
Sweet  Home  occurs  in  it. 

Claridge,  David,  the  hero  of  Sir 
Gilbert  Parker's  novel  of  Anglo- 
Egyptian  life,  The  Weavers. 

David  Claridge  was,  however,  a  creature 
of  the  unagrination.  It  has  been  said  that 
he  was  drawn  from  General  Gordon.  I  am 
not  conscious  of  having  taken  Gordon  for 
David's  prototype,  though  as  I  was  satur- 
ated with  all  that  had  been  written  about 
Gordon  there  is  no  doubt  that  something 
of  that  great  man  may  have  found  its  way 
into  the  character  of  David  Claridge.  The 
true  origin  of  David  Claridge,  however,  may 
be  found  in  a  short  story  called  "All  the 
World's  Mad,"  in  "Donovan  Pasha," 
which  was  originally  published  by  Lady 
Randolph  Churchill  in  an  ambitious  de- 
funct magazine  called  the  Anglo-Saxon 
Review.  The  truth  is  that  David  Claridge 
had  his  origin  in  a  fairly  close  understanding 
of  and  interest  in  Quaker  life.  I  had  Quaker 
relatives  through  the  marriage  of  a  connec- 
tion of  my  mother,  and  the  original  Ben 
Claridge,  the  uncle  of  David,  is  still  alive, 
a  very  old  man,  but  who  appealed  to  me  In 
my  boyhood  days,  and  who  wore  the  broad 
brim  and  the  straight  preacher-like  coat  of 
the  old-fashioned  Quaker.  The  grand- 
mother of  my  wife  was  also  a  Quaker,  and 
used  the  "thee"  and  "thou"  until  the  day 
of  her  death. — Sir  G.  Parker. 

Clarinda,  the  name  given  by  Robert 
Burns  to  his  friend,  Mrs.  Agnes 
McLehose.  He  first  met  her  (Decem- 
ber, 1787)  at  a  tea  party  in  Edin- 
burgh. A  married  woman  of  about 
his  own  age,  she  and  her  two  chil- 
dren had  been  deserted  by  an  un- 


worthy husband.  Handsome  in 
person,  lively  and  easy  in  manners, 
of  a  poetical  turn  of  mind,  with  some 
wit  and  not  too  high  a  degree  of 
refinement  or  delicacy,  she  was  ex- 
actly the  woman  to  fascinate  Burns. 
The  pair  took  an  immediate  fancy 
to  each  other.  Mrs.  McLehose  asked 
him  to  her  house,  but  an  accident 
prevented  his  keeping  the  appoint- 
ment. He  sent  a  letter  of  excuse  and 
so  began  the  famous  Letters  to  Cla- 
rinda. Bums  first  adopted  the  sig- 
nature Sylvander  in  the  third  of  his 
letters.  Begun  half  in  jest  the  corre- 
spondence soon  grew  warm  on  both 
sides.  The  sportive  acquaintance 
ripened  unaware  into  a  genuine  pas- 
sion. But  it  does  not  seem  to  have 
cost  Bums  any  heartbreak  to  sever 
the  connection  on  his  marriage  with 
Jean  Armor  in  1791.  With  Clarinda 
it  was  otherwise.  In  her  private 
journal,  written  40  years  afterwards, 
she  alludes  to  December  6  as  a  day 
she  can  never  forget,  as  it  was  on 
that  date  she  parted  with  Robert 
Bums  "  never  more  to  nieet  in  this 
world.    Oh !  may  we  meet  in  heaven !" 

Clarke,  Micah,  hero  and  title  of  a 
novel  by  Conan  Doyle. 

Claude,  hero  of  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough's  rhymed  novelette.  Amours 
de  Voyage  (1849).  Claude  is  in  love 
with  Mary  Trevellyn,  but,  as  the 
motto  on  the  title  page  says,  "  II 
doutait  de  tout,  mSme  de  I' amour" 
("  He  doubted  everything,  even 
love  ").  He  allows  his  fancy  to  roam 
everywhere  at  will,  and  settle  no- 
where; he  shrinks  from  action  and 
declines  into  a  gentle  gloom. 

Claudio,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
Measure  for  Measure,  a  young  lord  of 
Florence,  brother  to  Isabella,  who 
urges  her  to  sacrifice  her  virtue  to 
Angelo  in  order  to  save  him  from 
imprisonment  and  impending  death. 

A     very     Ill-conditioned,     self-righteous 

goung  fop  who  is  saved  from  punishment 
y  the  virtues  of  others  and  the  necessities 
of  the  plot.  It  is  a  comfort  to  have  Antonio 
speak  his  mind  on  him  and  on  his  like. 

What,  man!   I  know  them,  yea. 
And  what  they  weigh  even  to  the  utmost 
scruple 


Claudius 


99 


Clementina 


Scambling,   out  facing,   fashion   mongering 

boys 
That  lie  and  cog  and  flout,  deprave  and 

slander 

Walter  Raleigh:    Shakespeare. 

Claudius,  King  of  Denmark,  in 
Shakespeare's  tragedy,  Hamlet, 
Prince  of  Denmark,  is  the  uncle  and 
stepfather  of  the  prince  and  has 
achieved  the  throne  by  murdering 
his  own  brother.  In  the  original  story 
by  Saxo  Grammaticus  he  is  called 
Fengo. 

Clavering,  Sir  Francis,  in  Thack- 
eray's novel,  Pendennis,  a  baronet 
who  dissipates  his  money  in  gambling 
and  profligacy,  marries  a  wealthy 
widow,  Mrs.  Amory,  ^  facetiously 
dubbed  the  Begum,  who  is  no  widow, 
for  her  first  husband,  a  forger,  re- 
puted dead,  turns  up  to  blackmail 
Sir  Francis  (see  Altamont,  Colonel 
Jack).  Lady  Clavering  is  the  mother 
of  Blanche  Amory  {q.v.)  and  herself 
a  good-natured,  kindly,  ill-educated 
vulgarian. 

Clavijo,  hero  and  title  of  a  drama 
(1774)  by  Goethe,  founded  on  the 
real  story  of  Don  Jos6  Clavijo  y  Fox- 
ardo  (i  730-1 806),  a  Spanish  ofiBicial 
who  seduced  a  sister  of  Beaumarchais 
and  was  called  to  accoimt  by  the 
latter.  Failing  to  receive  satisfaction 
Beaumarchais,  a  friendless  stranger, 
fought  his  way  to  the  king's  presence. 
His  own  eloquence  did  the  rest. 
Clavijo  was  dismissed  in  disgrace. 
On  these  incidents  Beaumarchais 
himself  founded  his  drama  of  Eugenie. 
While  Beaumarchais  naturally 
painted  Clavijo  as  a  villain,  Goethe 
presents  him  as  an  amiable,  generous 
but  reckless  youth  who  is  led  by  pas- 
sion and  circumstances  into  unpre- 
meditated wrong. 

Clay,  Robert,  hero  of  Richard 
Harding  Davis's  novel.  Soldiers  of 
Fortune  (1897),  a  young  engineer  who 
takes  charge  of  a  mine  in  "  Olancho," 
South  America,  and  is  involved  in  a 
revolution. 

Cleishbotham,  Jedediah,  the  feigned 
editor,  as  Peter  Pattieson  is  the 
feigned  author,  of  Scott's  Tales  of 
My  Landlord.  He  figures  in  the  In- 
troduction to    The  Black  Dwarf  as 


a  pompous  pedant,  fond  of  many- 
syllabled  words,  the  schoolmaster  and 
parish  clerk  of  Gandercleugh.  Pattie- 
son is  his  assistant  teacher.  Jede- 
diah's  wife,  Dorothea,  figures  briefly 
as  a  Scotch  Xantippe. 

Clelie,  heroine  of  a  historical 
romance  by  Madeleine  de  Scudery, 
Clelie,  Histoire  Romaine  (10  vols., 
1 654-1 660).  She  is  the  daughter  of  a 
noble  Roman  who  has  taken  refuge 
from  the  tyrant  Tarquin  in  Carthage. 
There  Cl^He's  hand  is  sought  by  three 
lovers,  but  she  favors  Aronce,  son  of 
Lars  Porsena  of  Clusium.  The  rape 
of  Lucrece  and  the  expulsion  of  Tar- 
quin and  all  his  brood  are  worked  into 
a  plot  that  shifts  from  Carthage  to 
Capua,  to  Perusia,  Lake  Thrasimine, 
Ardea  and  Rome.  Lee's  play,  Lucius 
Junius  Brutus,  was  taken  from  C161ie. 
See  Cloelia. 

Clelie,  in  Moli^re's  comedy, 
VEtourdi  (1653),  a  young  slave  girl 
who,  in  violation  of  all  historic  prob- 
ability, is  held  on  French  soil  by 
Trufuldin.  L^lie,  the  blunderer,  loves 
her;  so  does  his  friend  Leandre.  Un- 
happily for  L^lie  he  has  not  the  money 
to  ransom  her.  Mascarille,  his  valet, 
proposes  to  carry  her  off.  He  suggests 
a  dozen  different  plans;  all  are  frus- 
trated by  the  well-meaning  density  of 
L^lie  iq.v.). 

Clemenceau,  Pierre,  hero  of  U  Af- 
faire Clemenceau  (1866),  a  novel 
by  Alexander  Diunas  Fils.  In  its 
earlier  chapters  it  is  partly  autobio- 
graphical. Like  the  author,  Paul  is  an 
illegitimate  child  and  suffers  agonies 
of  shame  and  humiliation  when  old 
enough  to  realize  his  position.  He 
becomes  a  famous  sculptor  and  falls 
into  the  nets  of  an  adventuress — a 
pseudo  countess  from  Spain  and  her 
daughter  Inez.  He  marries  the  girl 
to  find  out  too  late  that,  with  all  her 
calculated  naivetes,  she  is  a  harlot  at 
heart.  After  a  vain  struggle  between 
unconquerable  love  and  righteous 
wrath  he  ends  by  killing  her. 

Clementina,  Lady  (whose  full  name, 
rarely  used  in  the  narrative,  is  the 
Signorina  Clementina  della  Porretta), 
an  Italian  lady,  in  Richardson's  novel, 
Sir  Charles  Grandison  (1754),  beauti- 


Cleofas 


100 


Cleves 


fill,  accomplished,  amiable,  but  men- 
tally ill-balanced.  Engaged  to  be 
married  to  the  titular  hero,  she  is 
distracted  between  her  love  for  him 
and  her  attachment  to  the  CathoHc 
religion.  Religious  devotion  prevails, 
she  renounces  him  to  enter  a  convent, 
but  goes  insane  and  flees  to  England 
pursued  by  her  family  and  by  a  new 
lover,  the  Count  of  Belvedere.  Find- 
ing Sir  Charles  has  just  been  married 
to  Harriet  Byron,  she  regains  her  self- 
control  and  it  is  understood  that  she 
eventually  became  the  Countess  of 
Belvedere. 

In  a  letter  to  a  correspondent 
Richardson  hints  at  certain  prematri- 
monial  love-affairs,  among  them  one 
with  "  a  violent  Roman  Cathohc  lady 
of  a  fine  forttme,  a  zealous  professor; 
whose  terms  were  (all  her  fortune  in 
her  own  power — a  very  apron-string 
tenure!)  two  years*  probation,  and  her 
confessor's  report  in  favour  of  his 
being  a  true  proselyte  at  the  end  of 
them."  Mrs.  Barbauld  surmises  that 
this  lady  may  have  given  the  first 
hint  of  Clementina. 

Cleofas,  Don,  hero  of  Le  Sage's 
novel,  Le  Viable  Boiteux,  known  in 
English  as  The  Devil  on  Two  Sticks,  a 
high  mettled,  chivalric  young  Span- 
iard who  takes  the  fiend  Asmodeus 
(q.v.)  as  his  mentor  and  guide. 

Cleopatra,  Queen  of  Egypt,  sister 
and  wife  of  Ptolomy  Dionysius.  She 
was  driven  from  her  throne  but  re- 
estabHshed  by  Julius  Caesar  in  B.C.  47. 
After  Caesar's  death  she  captivated 
Mark  Antony  so  that  he  repudiated 
his  own  wife  Octavia  to  five  with  her 
until  he  fell  in  battle  at  Actium. 
Thereupon  Cleopatra  poisoned  her- 
self with  an  asp.  She  is  the  heroine 
of  numerous  dramas  in  many  lan- 
guages, notably  French  tragedies 
named  after  her:  Cleopatra  by  E. 
Jodelle  (1550).  Jean  Mairet  (1630), 
Isaac  de  Benserade  (1670),  J.  F. 
Marmontel  (1750),  and  Madame  de 
Girardin  (1847);  an  Italian  tragedy 
by  Vittorio  Alfieri  (i773);  and  in 
English  a  tragedy  called  Cleopatra 
(1599)  by  Samuel  Daniel;  Shakes- 
peare's Antony  and  Cleopatra  (1608), 
Dryden's  All  for  Love,  or  the  World  I 


Well  Lost  (1682),  and  G.  B.  Shaw's 
C(Bsar  and  Cleopatra  (1898). 

According  to  Plutarch  Cleopatra's 
beauty  was  not  "  immatchable  of 
other  women,"  but  Shakespeare 
makes  her  peerless  among  them, 
transcending  the  artist's  ideal  as 
much  as  that  transcends  mortal 
womanhood.  He  agrees,  however, 
in  making  beauty  the  least  part  of 
her  spell.  Though  we  never  forget 
it  we  think  most,  when  she  is  present, 
of  her  other  charms  whose  infinite 
variety  age  cannot  wither  nor  custom 
stale. 

Upon  Cleopatra  the  genius  of  Shakespeare 
has  been  lavished.  She  is  the  most  wonder- 
ful of  his  creation  of  women,  formed  of  the 
greatest  number  of  elements — apparently 
conflicting  elements,  yet  united  by  the 
mystery  of  hfe.  To  heap  up  together  all 
that  is  most  unsubstantial,  frivolous,  vain, 
contemptible  and  variable,  till  the  worth- 
lessness  be  lost  in  the  magnitude,  and  a  sense 
of  the  sublime  spring  from  the  very  ele- 
ments of  littleness:  to  do  this  belonged  only 
to  Shakespeare,  that  worker  of  miracles. — 
E.  Dowden:    Shakespeare's  Primer. 

Cleveland,   Captain  Clement,  the 

titular  hero  of  Scott's  novel.  The 
Pirate  (1822),  "  the  daring  leader  of 
the  bold  band  whose  name  was  as 
terrible  as  a  tornado."  He  differs 
from  Byron's  Corsair  in  a  nearer 
kinship  to  average  humanity. 

Cleves,  The  Princess  of.  Heroine 
and  title  of  a  historical  novel  (Fr.,  La 
Princesse  de  Clhes),  by  the  Countess 
Marie  de  La  Fayette  (1677).  "  One 
of  the  classics  of  French  literature," 
says  George  W.  Saintsbury,  and  adds: 
"  Its  scene  is  laid  at  the  court  of 
Henry  II  and  there  is  a  certain 
historical  basis,  but  the  principal  per- 
sonages are  drawn  from  the  author's 
own^  experience,  herself  being  the 
heroine,  her  husband  the  Prince  of 
Cloves,  and  Rochefoulcauld  the  Due 
de  Nemours,  while  other  characters 
are  identified  with  Louis  XIV  and 
his  courtiers  by  industrious  compilers 
of  keys."  Married  to  a  husband 
whom  she  respects  but  does  not  love, 
beloved  by  a  younger  man  whom  she, 
too,  loves  in  secret,  the  princess  flies 
from  temptation  into  the  country. 
There  the  Due  de  Nemours  overhears 
her  confession  to  her  own  husband 


Clifford 


101 


Clorin^ 


that  she  loves  another  and  is  afraid 
of  him.  One  night  the  duke  is  seen 
climbing  the  wall  of  the  princess's 
garden  in  a  mad  desire  to  catch  a 
distant  glimpse  of  her.  The  facts  are 
misrepresented  to  the  prince,  who 
dies  of  a  broken  heart.  Even  now 
the  princess  refuses  to  marry  her 
ducal  lover — partly  because  she  holds 
him  responsible,  in  a  measure,  for  her 
husband's  death,  and  partly  because 
his  love  is  so  essential  to  her  happiness 
that  she  dare  not  risk  its  loss  in  the 
coolness  that  might  succeed  to 
marriage. 

Clifford,  Paul,  titular  hero  of  a 
novel  (1830)  by  Bulwer-Lytton,  a 
child  of  unknown  parents,  who  after 
a  misspent  but  not  a  guilty  youth  is 
thrown  into  prison  on  the  false  charge 
of  stealing  a  watch  from  Brandon,  a 
lawyer.  He  becomes  corrupted  there, 
escapes  with  the  rascal  who  corrupted 
him,  and  turns  highwayman.  His 
exploits  finally  land  him  again  in  jail. 
Brandon,  now  a  judge,  sentences  him 
to  death  though  he  has  irrefutable 
evidence  that  the  culprit  is  his  own 
son,  and  himself  falls  dead  of  heart 
disease.    Clifford  escapes  to  America. 

Clinker,  Humphrey,  a  character 
who  gives  his  name  to  Smollett's 
novel,  The  Expedition  of  Humphrey 
Clinker  (1771),  but  is  really  of  small 
importance  to  the  plot  and  does  not 
make  his  appearance  until  a  full 
quarter  of  the  story  has  been  told, 
when  he  takes  the  place  of  a  postilion 
discharged  from  the  service  of  Mr. 
Matthew  Bramble.  He  is  described 
as  "  a  shabby  country  fellow  "  who 
"  seemed  to  be  about  twenty  years  of 
age,  of  a  middle  size,  with  bandy  legs, 
stooping  shoulders,  high  forehead, 
sandy  locks,  pinkish  eyes,  flat  nose 
and  long  chin ;  but  his  complexion  was 
of  a  sickly  yellow,  his  looks  denoted 
famine,  and  the  rags  that  he  wore 
could  hardly  conceal  what  decency 
requires  to  be  covered. ' '  He  improves 
rapidly  under  the  patronage  of  his 
new  master  and  it  eventually  turns 
out  that  he  is  that  gentleman's 
illegitimate  son. 

Clio,  in  classic  m3^hology  the  Muse 
of  history  (see  Muses),  usually  rep- 


resented ,^thja  hali-opeu  parGhment 
roll  in  her  hand.  Addison  used  one  or 
other  of  the  four  letters  in  her  name  in 
signing  his  contributions  to  the  Spec- 
tator, Hence  he  is  supposed  to  have 
had  this  muse  in  his  mind,  and  he 
himself  was  sometimes  called  Clio 
by  his  contemporaries.  A  contrary 
theory  has,  however,  been  hazarded, 
that  the  initial  affixes  refer  to  the 
places  where  the  essays  were  com- 
posed i.e.,  Chelsea,  London,  Islington 
and  the  Office. 

When  panting  virtue  her  last  efforts  made 

You  brought  your  Clio  to  the  Virgin's  aid. 

Somerville:    EpisUe  to  Addison. 

Clonbrony,  Lady,  in  Maria  Edge- 
worth's  novel.  The  Absentee,  is  the 
wife  of  Lord  Clonbrony,  one  of  the 
Irish  landed  gentry.  They  forsake 
their  homes  and  their  duties  in  order 
to  cut  a  splash  in  London  society. 
Unfitted  to  her  ^  new  career,  Lady 
Clonbrony  submits  to  htmiiliations, 
rebuffs  and  sacrifices  in  the  vain  hope 
of  final  tritmiph.  She  pretends  she 
is  not  Irish  and  even  affects  a  con- 
tempt for  her  native  land,  but  being 
unable  to  conquer  her  brogue  she  is 
sometimes  forced  to  hold  her  tongue 
and  thus  appear  more  foolish  than 
she  really  is,  and  at  others  to  carica- 
ture the  English  pronunciation,  and 
thus  betray  the  fact  that  she  is  not 
English.  In  vain  also  she  struggles 
to  school  her  free,  good-natiu"ed  Irish 
manner  into  the  cold,  sober,  stiff 
deportment  she  deems  to  be  English. 

Clonbrony,  Lord,  the  titular  Absen- 
tee in  Maria  Edgeworth's  Anglo-Irish 
novel  of  that  name  (18 12).  Yielding 
to  the  importunities  of  his  wife,  he 
takes  her  away  from  Ireland  to 
London  in  order  to  cut  a  figure  in 
fashionable  society.  Oblivious  of  the 
state  of  the  unfortunate  tenants  who 
suffer  by  his  absenteeism,  yet  feeling 
lost  in  his  new  surroundings  and 
unable  to  adjust  himself  to  new  con- 
ditions he  sinks  into  the  vices  of 
gaming  and  betting. 

Clorinda,  in  Tasso's  epic  poem, 
Jerusalem.  Delivered  (1675),  the  hero- 
ine of  the  pagan  army,  an  Amazonian 
maid  of  great  martiad  courage  and  of 


Clolea 


102 


Clumsy 


fnanVnoblc  traits. ;  She  was  t!l;ie  daugh- 
ter ot  a  Christian,  Senapus  of  Ethiopia, 
but  because  she  was  bom  white  her 
mother  changed  her  for  a  black  child, 
ajid  Clorinda  was  taken  by  the 
eunuch  Arsetes  to  Egjrpt.  There  she 
was  brought  up  a  pagan.  She  ap- 
peared in  full  armor  before  King 
Aladine  to  sue  for  the  lovers,  and  the 
king,  granting  her  plea,  welcomed 
her  among  the  defenders  of  Jerusa- 
lem. Though  herself  impervious  to 
sexual  passion  she  inspires  love  in 
many  men,  including  Tancred,  the 
leader  of  the  Christian  forces.  Find- 
ing himself  engaged  in  battle  with 
her  and  deeming  her  a  man,  he  breaks 
her  helmet,  discovers  her  to  be  the 
maiden  of  his  love,  and  refuses  to 
continue  the  fight.  Later  she  sets 
fire  to  one  of  Godfrey's  engines  of 
war,  is  pursued  to  the  walls  of  Jeru- 
salem by  Tancred,  and,  again  un- 
recognized, is  this  time  slain — to  his 
own  eternal  sorrow.  But  she  dies 
not  before  he  can  give  her  the  sacred 
rites  of  baptism  and  a  dream  con- 
soles him  with  the  assurance  that  she 
is  among  the  blessed  in  Paradise. 

Cloten,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy 
Cymbeline  (1605),  the  rejected  lover 
of  Imogen,  subsequently  slain  by 
Guiderius. 

The  character  of  Cloten,  the  conceited, 
booby  lord  and  rejected  lover  of  Imogen, 
though  not  very  agreeable  in  itself,  and  at 

E  resent  obsolete,  is  drawn  with  much 
umour  and  quaint  extravagance.  The 
description  which  Imogen  gives  of  his  un- 
welcome addresses  to  her — "Whose  love- 
suit  hath  been  to  me  as  fearful  as  a  siege" 
— ^is  enough  to  cure  the  most  ridiculous 
lover  of  his  folly.  It  is  remarkable  that 
though  Cloten  makes  so  poor  a  figure  in 
love,  he  is  described  as  assuming  an  air  of 
consequence  as  the  Queen's  son  in  a  council 
of  state,  and  with  all  the  absurdity  of  his 
person  and  manners,  is  not  without  shrewd- 
ness in  his  observations.  So  true  is  it  that 
folly  is  as  often  owing  to  a  want  of  proper 
sentiments  as  to  a  want  of  understanding! — 
Hazlitt:    Characters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays. 

"  Miss  Seward,  in  one  of  her  letters,  assures 
us  that,  singular  as  the  character  of  Cloten 
may  appear,  it  is  the  exact  prototype  of  a 
person  whom  she  once  knew.  "The  un- 
meaning frown  of  the  countenance,  the 
shuffling  gait,  the  burst  of  voice,  the  bust- 
ling insignificance,  the  fever-and-ague  fits 
of  valor,  the  forward  tetchiness,  the  unprin- 
cipled malice,  and — what  ia  most  curious — 


those  occasional  gleams  of  good  sense, 
amidst  the  floating  clouds  of  folly  which 
generally  darkened  and  confused  the  man's 
brain,  and  which,  in  the  character  of  Cloten, 
we  are  apt  to  impute  to  a  violation  of  unity 
in  character;  but,  in  the  sometime  Captain 

C n,  I  saw  the  portrait  of  Cloten  was 

not  out  of  nature." 

Clout,    Colin,    or    Colyn    Cloute. 

Title  and  pretended  author  of  a  poeti- 
cal satire  by  John  Skelton  (1460- 
1529),  which  is  a  vigorous  pre- 
Ref  ormation  attack  upon  the  Catholic 
clergy,  their  alleged  self-indulgence 
and  disregard  for  their  flock,  their 
lack  of  piety  and  learning.  It  ends 
with  these  lines: 

And  if  ye  stand  in  doubte, 
Who  brought  this  rhyme  aboute 
My  name  is  Colyn  Cloute. 

The  surname  Is  clearly  suited  to  the 
ostensibly  dull-witted  clown  of  the 
satire,  while  the  Colin  is  modified 
from  Colas  (Claus),  short  for  Nich- 
olas, which  was  a  typical  proper  name 
because  of  the  popularity  of  the 
saint  who  bore  it. 

From  John  Skelton  the  pseudo- 
nym was  adopted  by  several  Eliza- 
bethan poets,  notably  Edmund  Spen- 
ser, who  called  himself  Colin  Clout 
not  only  in  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home 
Again  (1595),  but  in  all  his  pastoral 
poems. 

Colin  Clout  is  also  a  character  in 
Gay's  pastoral,  The  Shepherd's  Week. 

Clumsy,  Miss  Hoyden,  daughter 
of  Sir  Tunbelly  Clumsy  (see  below), 
a  lively,  high-spirited,  innocent  but 
ill-educated  girl  who  falls  in  love  with 
Tom  Fashion  {q.v.)  when  he  person- 
ates her  betrothed  lover,  Lord  Fop- 
pington. 

Clumsy,  Sir  Tunbelly,  father  of 
Miss  Hoyden  in  Vanbrugh's  The 
Relapse  (1697)  and  in  Sheridan's 
rifacimento  of  that  comedy,  A  Trip 
to  Scarborough  (i777)-  A  justice  of 
the  peace,  a  cringing  toady  to  the 
aristocracy,  but  harsh,  brutal  and 
meanspirited  to  his  equals  and  in- 
feriors, a  lineal  ancestor  of  Squire 
Western. 

The  ancestor  In  a  direct  line  of  Squire 
Western.  That  he  bears  a  close  resemblance 
to  nature  need  not  be  admitted.  That  he 
is  an  excellent  piece  of  fooling  cannot  be 


Clutterbuck 


103 


Collins 


denied.  He  holds  siege  in  his  country  house, 
asks  at  the  approach  of  a  stranger  if  the 
blunderbuss  is  primed,  and,  when  he  and 
his  servants  at  last  appear  on  the  scene,  they 
come  armed  with  "guns,  clubs,  pitchforks 
and  scythes."  Prof.  Felix  E.  Schelling: 
Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature, 
viii,  183. 

Clutterbuck,  Cuthbert,  the  feigned 
editor  of  Scott's  novels,  The  Monas- 
tery and  the  Abbot  and  also  of  The 
Fortunes  of  Nigel.  The  "Prefatory 
Letter"  to  Peveril  of  the  Peak  is 
addressed  to  him  in  a  serio-comic 
vein.  He  is  represented  as  a  retired 
captain  living  in  Kennaquhair  and 
guarding  himself  against  ennui  by  a 
devotion  to  the  lighter  and  trivial 
branches  of  antiquarian  study. 

Codlingsby,  hero  and  title  of  a 
burlesque  "  novel  "  by  W.  M.  Thack- 
eray.    See  CONINGSBY. 

Coelebs  (Lat.,  a  bachelor),  the 
hero  of  Hannah  More's  novel,  Coelebs 
in  Search  of  a  Wife  (1808).  A  young 
gentleman  of  fortune  and  family  in 
the  north  of  England,  he  sets  out  to 
find  a  bride.  His  departed  mother 
had  warned  him  that  "  the  education 
of  the  present  race  of  females  is  not 
very  favorable  to  domestic  happi- 
ness." His  father  had  left  a  dying 
injunction  that  he  should  take  the 
advice  of  an  old  friend  named  Stanley. 
After  brief  and  unsatisfactory  experi- 
ences with  the  fashionable  world  in 
London,  Coelebs  makes  his  way  to 
Stanley  Grove,  and^  there  finds  the 
threefold  ideals  of  his  father,  mother 
and  himself  realized  in  Lucilla,  one  of 
the  three  daughters  of  the  house. 

Mrs.  Clifford  tells  me  that  Mrs.  Hannah 
More  was  lately  at  Dawlish  and  excited 
more  curiosity  there,  and  engrossed  more 
attention,  than  any  of  the  distinguished 
personages  who  were  there,  not  excepting 
the  Prince  of  Orange.  The  gentleman  from 
whom  she  drew  Coelebs  was  there,  but 
most  of  those  who  saw  him  did  him  the 
justice  to  declare  that  he  was  a  much  more 
agreeable  man  than  Coelebs.  If  you  have 
any  curiosity  to  know  his  name  I  can  tell 
you  that — young  Mr.  Harford  of  Blaise 
Castle. — Maria  Edgeworth  to  Mrs. 
RuxTON,  January,  1810. 

Coffin,  Long  Tom,  in  Cooper*s 
novel.  The  Pilot,  one  of  the  most 
famous  of  aU  sailors  in  fiction.  Bom 
"  while  the  boat  was  crossing  Nan- 
tucket shoals,"  he  loves  the  sea  as 


"  his  native  soil."  He  has  been  a 
whaler  before  he  has  been  a  man-of- 
war's  man  and  his  favorite  weapon 
continues  to  be  a  harpoon. 

Long  Tom  Coffin  may  be  described  as 
Leatherstocking  suffered  a  sea-change — 
with  a  harpoon  instead  of  a  rifle,  and  a  pea- 
jacket  instead  of  a  hunting-shirt.  In  both 
the  same  primitive  elements  may  be  dis- 
cerned: the  same  limited  intellectual  range 
combined  with  professional  or  technical 
skill;  the  same  generous  affections  and  un- 
erring moral  instincts;  the  same  religious 
feeling,  taking  the  form  at  times  of  fatalism 
or  superstition.  Long  Tom's  love  of  the 
sea  is  like  Leatherstocking's  love  of  the 
woods;  the  former's  dislike  of  the  land  is 
like  the  latter's  dislike  of  the  clearings. 
Cooper  himself,  as  we  are  told  by  his  daugh- 
ter, was  less  satisfied,  in  his  last  years,  with 
Long  Tom  Coffin  than  most  of  his  readers — 
and,  of  the  two  characters,  considered  that 
of  Boltrope  the  better  piece  of  workman- 
ship.— Atlantic  Monthly,  January,   1862. 

Colambre,  Lord,  in  Maria  Edge- 
worth's  novel.  The  Absentee,  the  son 
of  Lord  ClonlDrony.  While  his  par- 
ents are  away  in  London  he  visits  in 
disguise  the  family  estates,  which 
have  been  left  in  charge  of  a  rapa- 
cious agent,  who  feels  secure  in  his 
master's  absence  and  in  that  master's 
indifference  to  all  but  the  money 
result  of  his  estate.  The  scene  in 
which  Lord  Colambre  discovers  him- 
self to  his  tenantry  and  to  their 
oppressor  Macaulay  pronounces  the 
best  thing  written  of  its  kind  since 
the  opening  of  the  twenty-second 
book  of  the  Odyssey.  No  mean 
authority  and  no  mean  praise! 

Coldstream,  Sir  Charles,  in  Charles 
Matthews'  farce  Used  Up,  the  blas^ 
hero  who  sees  nothing  in  the  world 
to  admire  or  esteem. 

Collins,  Mr.,  in  Miss  Austen's 
novel,  Pride  arid  Prejudice,  a  clergy- 
man, solemn,  conceited,  priggish, 
self-satisfied,  a  toady  to  the  great, 
abundantly  humorous  in  his  total 
lack  of  himior.  He  courts  Elizabeth 
Bennett,  and  when  rejected  marries 
Charlotte  Lucas. 

Mr.  Collins  has  been  justly  described  as 
the  representative  under  a  somewhat  altered 
form  of  the  servile  domestic  chaplain  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  He  was  a  possible 
character  in  Jane  Austen's  dav.  Perhaps  a 
vestige  of  him  might  be  found  even  now. — 
GOLDWIN  SB4ITH,  Life  of  Jane  Austen,  p.  84. 


CoIviUe 


104 


Conroy 


Colville,  Theodore,  the  middle- 
aged  hero  of  W.  D.  Howells'  infor- 
mational novel,  Indian  Summer 
(1886),  whose  engagement  to  the 
twenty-year-old  Imogene  Graham 
convinces  him  of  the  emptiness  of 
his  claim  to^  youth.  His  honestjr  of 
purpose,  which  accomplishes  its  aims 
less  straightforwardly  than  its  owner 
intends,  his  goodness  of  heart,  his 
tireless  amiabiHty  of  spirit,  and  his 
habit  of  taking  life  with  all  earnest- 
ness, yet  with  a  drollery  which  gives 
to  all  living  a  pleasant  savor,  help 
him  out  of  what  had  once  threatened 
to  be  a  serious  dilemma.  Like  Henry 
Esmond  he  ends  by  marrying  his  in- 
tended mother-in-law. 

Conachar,  the  foster  child  of  the 
White  Doe,  the  name  under  which 
Eachin  Maclan  is  apprenticed  to 
Simon  Glover  in  Scx)tt's  Fair  Maid  of 
Perth. 

To  me  one  of  the  most  remarkable  figures 
he  ever  drew  was  that  of  Conachar.  Noth- 
ing could  be  more  diflficult  than  to  provoke 
at  once  pity,  contempt  and  sympathy  for  a 
coward.  Yet  he  has  successfully  achieved 
this  feat;  and  as  far  as  I  can  recollect  it  is 
the  sole  instance  in  English  Uterature  where 
such  an  attempt  was  ever  made.  More 
than  this,  he  has  drawn  two  cowards  in  this 
remarkable  novel — each  quite  different  from 
the  other  and  contrasted  with  remarkable 
skill — the  comic,  swaggering,  good-natured, 
fussy  little  coward,  Oliver  Proudfute,  who 
provokes  a  perpetual  smile;  and  the  sullen, 
irritable,  proud  and  revengeful  coward 
Conachar,  whom  we  cannot  but  pity  while 
we  despise  him. — W.  W.  Story:  Conver- 
sations in  a  Studio  (1890). 

Coningsby,  Harry,  hero  of  Dis- 
raeli's pohtical  novel,  Coningsby  or 
the  New  Generation  (1844).  The 
name  may  have  been  borrowed  from 
that  of  a  well  known  statesman  of 
Queen  Anne's  day  (Thomas  Earl 
Coningsby  1656-1729)  the  portrait 
is  drawn  to  same  extent  from  Dis- 
raeU's  contemporary  and  friend 
(George  Sidney  Smythe  18 18-1857 
afterwards  Viscount  Strangford  and 
Baron  Penshurst)  and  in  larger  de^ee 
from  himself.  Thackeray  satinzed 
both  the  novel  and  the  hero  (whom  he 
obviously  identified  with  Disraeli)  in 
Codlingsbyt  one  of  his  Novels  by 
Eminent  Hands  republished  in  Amer- 
ica as  Punches  Prize  Novelists. 


Coningsby  is  the  impersonation  of  Young 
England,  and  in  him  the  author  intendi 
that  we  should  see  the  beginning,  growth, 
and  manhood  of  that  school  of  perfect  states- 
men.— North  British  Review. 

He  paints  his  own  portrait  in  this  book 
in  the  most  splendid  fashion.  It  is  the 
queerest  of  the  whole  queer  gallery  of  like- 
nesses: he  appears  as  the  greatest  philoso- 
pher, the  greatest  poet,  the  greatest  horse- 
man, the  greatest  statesman,  the  greatest 
rou6  in  the  world;  with  all  the  qualities  of 
Pitt  and  Byron  and  Burke,  and  the  great 
Mr.  Widdicomb  of  Batty's  amphitheatre. 
Perhaps  one  is  reminded  of  the  last  named 
famous  individual  more  than  of  any  other. — 
W.  M.  Thackeray  in  The  Pictorial  Times, 
May  25,  1844,  quoted  in  T.  P.  O'Connor's 
Lord  Beaconsfield,  p.  240. 

Connell,  Father,  the  chief  character 
in  a  novel  of  that  name  by  Michael 
and  John  Banim.  An  old  Catholic 
priest  whose  simple  virtues  kin  him 
to  the  Dr.  Primrose  of  Goldsmith,  he 
befriends  a  poor  vagrant  boy,  Neddy 
Fennell,  whose  adventures  form  the 
staple  of  the  narrative. 

Conrad,  hero  of  Byron's  poem.  The 
Corsair  (18 14),  a  pirate  chief  living 
on  the  Pirate's  Isle  with  Medora,  his 
wife.  Hearing  that  the  Sultan  Seyd 
meditated  an  attack  on  his  strong- 
hold, he  set  sail  secretly  for  the 
Sultan's  dominions,  and  while  his 
fleet  was  employed  in  setting  fire  to 
the  Moslem  ships  he  entered  the 
palace  in  disguise  as  a  dervish,  but 
was  detected  and  cast  into  a  dungeon. 
Gulnare,  the  queen  of  the  harem  and 
the  most  beautiful  of  Seyd's  slaves, 
released  him,  confessed  her  love  for 
him,  assassinated  Seyd,  and  fled  in 
page's  costume  with  Conrad.  But 
when  the  latter  found  that  Medora 
had  died  during  his  absence  he  for- 
sook the  island  with  Gulnare  and 
disappeared.  We  are  allowed  to 
infer  that  he  reappears  as  Lara  in  the 
poem  of  that  name  (g.f.).  ^  Gulnare 
still  attends  him  as  a  disguised  page 
imder  the  name  of  Kaled. 

Conroy,  Gabriel,  in  Bret  Harte*s 
novel  of  that  name  (1876),  is  the 
brother  of  the  heroine,  Grace  Conroy, 
and  himself  an  important  factor  in 
the  plot,  though  the  hero  is  more 
properly  Arthur  Poinsett,  travelling 
under  the  name  of  Philip  Ashley  who 
woos  and  wins  the  heroine. 


Constance 


105 


Cordelia 


Constance  of  Brittany,  in  Shake- 
speare's historical  play  King  John,  the 
mother  of  Arthur,  Duke  of  Bretagne, 
and  widow  of  Geoffrey  Plantagenet. 
In  real  life  she  was  twice  married 
after  Geoffrey's  death  and  died  in 
I20I — before  John  gained  possession 
of  Arthur. 

Constantin,  The  Abbe,  in  Ludovic 
Halevy's  novel  of  that  name  (1882), 
is  a  generous,  genial,  self-sacrificing 
priest,  cur^  for  thirty  years  of  the 
little  village  of  Longueral. 

Consuelo,  heroine  of  a  romance  of 
that  name  (1844)  and  of  its  sequel. 
The  Countess  of  Rvdolstadt  (1846),  by 
George  Sand.  She  is  introduced  as  a 
waif  in  the  streets  of  Venice,  a  child 
musician,  barefooted  and  meagrely 
clad,  earning  her  bread  with  voice 
and  guitar  in  the  caf^s.  She  has  all 
the  freedom  of  the  lowest  social  class 
and  all  the  knowledge  acquired  un- 
aware by  children  bred  in  the  open; 
she  lives  in  her  garret  unguarded  and 
unguided  save  by  her  own  instincts 
of  right.  Even  the  youthful  deprav- 
ity of  her  betrothed,  Anzoleto,  is 
kept  in  check  by  her  fierce  innocence. 
Her  musical  gifts  attract  the  atten- 
tion of  Porpora,  an  old  maestro,  who 
educates  her  and  supplies  the  funds 
for  her  triumphal  deblit  as  an  opera 
singer.  He  takes  her  on  a  tour 
through  the  capitals  of  Europe  and 
sends  her  up  to  his  friends,  the  Rudol- 
stadts,  for  a  vacation.  They  are  an 
old  Catholic  family  of  eccentric  ways. 
The  eldest  son,  Albert,  Count  de 
Rudolstadt,  falls  in  love  with  her 
and  marries  her  on  his  deathbed. 
Wife  and  widow  all  in  one  day,  but 
still  a  virgin,  she  renounces  her  title 
to  return  to  the  theatre.  In  the  end 
it  turns  out  that  Albert  was  buried  in 
a  deathlike  trance.  He  reappears 
tmder  the  incognito  of  Liverani. 

Copper,  Captain,  in  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  Rule  a  Wife  and  Have  a 
Wife  (1640),  the  nickname  given  to 
Michael  Perez,  a  loud-mouthed  Span- 
ish soldier  of  great  but  unfounded  pre- 
tensions to  wealth  and  fashion.  He 
marries  Estifania,  an  intriguing  ser- 
vant girl,  under  the  idea  that  she  is 
an  heiress,  and  when  both  are  dis- 


appointed and  his  jewels  turn  out  to 
be  counterfeit,  she  hurls  at  him  the 
taunt  from  which  his  nickname  is 
derived: 

Your  clothes  are  parallel  to  these,  all  cotui- 

terfeits. 
Put  these  and  them  on,  you're  a  man  of 

copper, 
A  copper,  copper  captain. 

Copperfield,  David,  hero  of  a  novel 
of  that  name  (1849- 1 850)  by  Charles 
Dickens,  which  is  to  some  extent 
autobiographical,  especially  in  the 
earlier  scenes.  David  is  a  timid  and 
imaginative  lad  whose  widowed 
mother  marries  Mr.  Murdstone.  The 
latter  proves  cruel  both  as  husband 
and  stepfather.  ^  David's  mother  dies, 
David  himself  is  put  to  the  lowest 
kind  of  work  at  the  warehouse  of 
Murdstone  and  Grinby,  wine  mer- 
chants, and  in  a  shoe-blacking  estab- 
lishment. He  runs  away  to  his 
father's  aunt,  Miss  Betsy  Trotwood, 
is  kindly  received  by  that  eccentric 
spinster,  in  due  course  becomes  a 
newspaper  reporter  and  then  an 
author,  marries  Dora  Spenlow,  "  the 
childwife,"  who  dies  just  as  her  pretty 
childishness  is  beginning  to  pall  upon 
David's  matured  taste,  and  he  is  left 
free  to  many  his  real  love,  Agnes 
Wickfield.  Among  Copperfidd's 
friends  and  acquaintances  are  the 
humble  Peggottys,  the  htunorsome 
Micawbers,  the  irridescent  James 
Steerforth,  and  the  good  and  reliable 
Tommy  Traddles  (see  these  entries). 

Coquette,  in  William  Black's  novel, 
A  Daughter  of  Heth  (i 871),  is  a  nick- 
name given  to  Catherine  Cassil^, 
daughter  of  a  Scotch  father  and  a 
French  mother,  who,  after  the  latter's 
death,  is  entrusted  to  her  uncle, 
minister  of  Airlie.  Her  tmselfish 
eagerness  to  harmonize  herself  with 
her  dour  surroundings  succeeds  at  last, 
but  only  at  the  cost  of  her  own  life. 
The  accoimt  of  her  refining  influence 
upon  the  disorderly  household  and 
rough  children  of  the  Scotch  clei-gy- 
man  is  full  of  pathos  and  humor. 

Cordelia,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy, 
King  Lear,  the  youngest  daughter 
of  that  monarch,  who,  though  she 
refuses  to  join  in  their  hypocritical 


Corey 


106 


Corny 


professions,  is  the  only  one  that  truly 
loves  him.  Disinherited  and  banished 
she  returns  in  Act  iii  with  an  army  to 
restore  her  father,  but  is  defeated, 
captured  and  put  to  death  in  prison. 
Lear,  in  a  last  outburst,  kills  the  slave 
who  hanged  her  and  dies  upon  her 
body. 

Spenser  (Faerie  Queene,  II,  x,  27) 
first  used  the  form  Cordelia,  which 
Shakespeare  followed. 

If  Lear  be  the  grandest  of  Shakespeare's 
tragedies,  Cordelia,  in  herself  as  a  human 
being,  governed  by  the  purest  and  holiest 
impulses  and  motives,  approaches  near  to 
perfection  and,  in  her  adaptation  as  a 
dramatic  personage  to  a  determinate  plan 
of  action,  may  be  pronounced  altogether 
perfect. — Mrs.  Jameson:  Characteristics  of 
Women. 

In  Hollnshed's  Chronicle,  Cordelia  sur- 
vives her  misfortunes,  regains  her  kingdom, 
and  comforts  the  declining  years  of  her 
father,  but  Shakespeare,  before  reaching 
the  close  of  his  play,  had  wound  up  the 
tragedy  to  such  a  pitch  that  a  happy  ending 
would  have  come  as  an  anticlimax.  "A 
deeper  peace  than  the  peace  of  old  age  by 
the  fireside  was  needed  to  compose  that 
heartrending  tragedy." — Walter  Raleigh: 
Shakespeare,  1907. 

Corey,     Bromfield,     in     W.     D. 

Howells's  novel.  The  Rise  of  Silas 
Lapham,  an  amiable  Boston  aristo- 
crat; a  connoisseur  in  art  and  a 
dilettante  artist;  full  of  ^  pleasant 
whims  and  mild  luiconventionalities, 
while  essentially  conservative  at 
heart;  well  bred,  well  groomed,  look- 
ing on  life  with  a  cynical  wit  that 
includes  himself  and  all  he  stands  for 
in  its  gentle  iconoclasm. 

Corey,  Giles.  Hero  and  title  of 
one  of  Longfellow's  New  England 
Tragedies,  and  of  a  historical  drama 
by  Mary  Wilkins  Freeman. 

In  real  life  Giles  was  one  of  the 
unfortunates  put  to  death  in  Salem, 
Massachusetts,  during  the  witchcraft 
trials.  An  old  man  of  eighty,  he 
confronted  his  persecutors  unflinch- 
ingly and  let  himself  be  crushed  to 
death  under  huge  weights  without  a 
sign  of  weakening,^  his  fortitude  win- 
ning for  him  the  title  of  The  Man  of 
Iron.  His  ghost,  it  is  rumored,  occa- 
sionally reappeared  on  the  site  of  his 
martyrdom,  these  visits  boding  little 
good  to  the  city  of  Salem.    See  an 


anonymous  contemporary  ballad  pre- 
served in  Drake's  New  England 
Legends,  p.  186. 

Corinne,  heroine  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  by  Madame  de  Stael,  a  young 
woman  whose  lover  proves  faithless 
and  who  pines  away  and  dies  imder 
pathetic  circumstances. 

Coriolanus,  in  Roman  legend  the 
surname  of  Cnaeus  or  Caius  Marcius. 
He  appears  to  have  flourished  in  the 
fifth  century  B.C.  and  is  represented 
as  the  champion  of  the  patricians,  the 
conqueror  of  the  Volscian  city  of 
Corioli,  whence  his  surname,  and 
finally  as  the  leader  of  the  Volscians 
against  Rome.  Shakespeare  makes 
hun  the  hero  of  a  tragedy,  Coriolanus 
(1608),  founded  on  North's  Plutarch, 
with  a  slight  shifting  of  names  m  the 
female  characters.  Plutarch  gives 
the  name  of  Voliminia  to  the  wife  of 
Coriolanus;  Shakespeare  transfers  it 
to  his  mother,  called  Veturia  by 
Plutarch. 

Coriolanus  is  by  nature  of  a  kindly  and 
generous  disposition,  but  he  inherits  the 
aristocratic  tradition,  and  his  kindness 
strictly  limits  itself  to  the  circle  which  in- 
cludes those  of  his  own  rank  and  class.  For 
his  mother  he  has  a  veneration  approaching 
to  worship;  he  is  content  to  be  a  subordinate 
under  Cominius;  for  the  old  Menenius  he 
has  an  almost  filial  regard,  but  the  people 
are  "slaves,"  "curs,"  "minions."  His 
haughtiness  becomes  towering,  because  his 
personal  pride  which  in  itself  is  great,  is 
built  up  over  a  solid  and  high-reared  pride 
of  class.  When  he  is  banished  his  bitter- 
ness arises,  not  only  from  his  sense  of  the 
contemptible  nature  of  the  adversaries  to 
whom  he  is  forced  to  yield,  but  from  the 
additional  sense  that  he  has  been  deserted 
by  his  own  class,  "the  dastard  nobles." — 
E.  DowDEN,  Shakespeare  Primer. 

Corny,  King,  in  Maria  Edge  worth's 
novel  of  Irish  life,  Osmond,  the  nick- 
name popularly  given  to  Cornelius 
O'Shane,  cousin  to  Osmond  and  self- 
styled  "  King  of  the  Black  Islands," 
from  his  estate.  Hasty  and  violent 
at  intervals,  he  is  essentially  kind, 
warm-hearted  and  affectionate.  His 
frank  and  unsuspecting  nature  makes 
him  adored  by  all  his  tenantry,  none 
of  whom  would  harm  their  king. 

Besides  being  one  of  the  most  delightful 
creations  in  romantic  literature,  he  is  an 
instructive  study  toward  the  comprehension 
of  the  Irish  character.    Macaulay  pointed 


Corombona 


107 


Costigan 


out,  in  speaking  of  the  aboriginal  aristocracy 
of  Ireland,  that  Miss  Edgeworth's  King 
Corny  belongs  to  a  later  and  much  more 
civilized  generation,  but  added  that  "who- 
ever has  studied  that  admirable  portrait 
can  form  some  notion  of  what  King  Corny's 
great-grandfather  must  have  been  like." — 
Helen  Z:mmern. 

Corombona,  Vittoria,  heroine  of 
Webster's  tragedy,  The  White  Devil 
(1612).  She  fascinates  the  Duke  of 
Bracdiiano  and  spurs  him  on  to  the 
murder  of  his  duchess  and  her  own 
husband.  Accused  of  these  crimes, 
she  conducts  her  own  defence  so  as  to 
baffle  the  judges,  retires  to  a  convent, 
from  which  Bracchiano  releases  her 
in  order  to  many  her,  and^  after 
Bracchiano's  death  by  poison  is  her- 
self stabbed  by  her  brother  Flaminio 
because  she  had  not  procured  his 
advancement  by  Bracchiano.  Web- 
ster has  departed  from  the  facts  of 
history  as  related  by  French  and 
Italian  authors,  who  are  in  substantial 
accord     with     one     another.       See 

ACCORANBONI,  VlTTORIA. 

Correze,  hero  of  Ouida's  Moths,  an 
operatic  tenor  who  capttires  the  world 
by  the  charms  of  his  voice  which  are 
equalled  only  by  the  chivalry  of  his 
conduct.  He  is  in  love  with  Vere  and 
she  with  him,  but  he  respects  her  and 
plays  Mentor  to  her,  warns  her  against 
wicked  mamma,  advises  her  to  keep 
herself  unspotted  from  the  world, 
fights  her  husband  because  he  neglects 
her  and  makes  love  to  her  only  after 
she  has  been  unrighteously  divorced. 

Correze  Is  not  an  ordinary  tenor,  he 
sustains  with  perfect  ease  what  would  gen- 
erally be  regarded  as  the  enormous  strain 
of  conducting  himself  when  oflf  the  stage 
with  the  same  lofty  ideality  that  character- 
izes his  behavior  in  tights  and  before  the 
footlights.  After  he  meets  Vere,  grand- 
duchesses  throw  themselves  at  his  feet  in 
vain;  he  oozes  exalted  didacticism  in  the 
Intervals  of  singing  the  highest  order  of 
music,  and  if  it  were  not  for  his  almost  holy 
devotion  we  feel,  instinctively,  Vere  would 
be  in  great  peril  among  the  gins  and  pitfalls 
of  the  world.  As  it  is,  she  comes  out  un- 
scathed, though  divorced,  and  safe  in  his 
arms  though  bereft  of  public  respect. — 
N.  Y.  Nation,  March  25,  1880. 

Corsican  Brothers.    See  Franchi. 

Costard,  in  Shakespeare's  Love's 
Labor's  Lost  (1594),  a  clown  who  apes 
the   stilted   language   of   the   Eliza- 


bethan courtiers  and  misapplies  it  in 
a  fashion  that  reveals  him  as  one  of 
the  earlier  literary  ancestors  of  Mrs. 
Malaprop.  Such  a  word  as  honorifi- 
cahilitudinitatibus  has  special  charms 
for  him. 

Costigan,  Captain  J.  Chesterfield, 
familiarly  known  as  Cos.  in  Thack- 
eray's Pendennis,  an  ex-army  officer; 
Irish,  jovial;  humorous  in  himself  and 
exciting  the  humor  of  others;  drunken 
and  disreputable,  but  careful  of  the 
good  repute  of  his  daughter  Emily. 
He  encourages  her  to  accept  the 
respectful  advances  of  Arthur  Pen- 
dennis until  he  is  convinced  by  Major 
Pendennis  that  the  boy  has  no  pros- 
pects, then  he  cheerfidly  breaks  the 
engagement.  Several  prototypes  for 
this  character  have  been  suggested, 
the  most  likely  being  the  father  of 
Miss  Eliza  O'Neill,  the  actress,  con- 
cerning whom  some  stories  are  told 
in  Moore's  Diary  that  must  at  least 
have  proved  suggestive  to  Thackeray. 
But  he  insisted  that  he  never  met 
Costigan  in  the  flesh  until  long  after 
the  puDlication  of  Pendennis. 

In  the  novel  of  Pendennis,  written  ten 
years  ago,  there  is  an  account  of  a  certain 
Costigan,  whom  I  had  invented  (as  I  sup- 
pose authors  invent  their  personages  out 
of  scraps,  heel-taps,  odds  and  ends  of  char- 
acters). I  was  smoking  in  a  tavern  parlor 
one  night,  and  this  Costigan  came  into  the 
room  alive — the  very  man: — the  most  re- 
markable resemblance  of  the  printed 
sketches  of  the  man,  of  the  nide  drawings 
in  which  I  had  depicted  him.  He  had  the 
same  little  coat,  the  same  battered  hat, 
cocked  on  one  eye,  the  same  twinkle  in  that 
eye.  "Sir,"  said  I,  knowing  him  to  be  an 
old  friend  whom  I  had  met  in  unknown 
regions,  "sir,"  I  said,  "may  I  offer  you  a 
glass  of  brandy-and- water?"  "Bedad,  ye 
may,"  says  he,  "and  I'll  sing  ye  a  song  tu." 
Of  course  he  spoke  with  an  Irish  brogue. 
Of  course  he  had  been  in  the  army.  In  ten 
minutes  he  pulled  out  an  Army  Agent's 
account,  whereon  his  name  was  written.  A 
few  months  after  we  read  of  him  in  a  police 
court.  How  had  I  come  to  know  him,  to 
divine  him?  Nothing  shall  convince  me 
that  I  have  not  seen  that  man  in  the  world 
of  spirits.  In  the  world  of  spirits  and  water 
I  know  I  did;  but  that  is  a  mere  quibble  of 
words.  I  was  not  surprised  when  he  sF>oke 
in  an  Irish  brogue.  I  had  had  cognizance 
of  him  before,  somehow. — Thackeray: 
Roundabout  Papers,  De  Finibus. 

Costigan,  Emily,  in  Thackeray's 
Pendennis.   See  Fotheringay,  Miss. 


Courtenay 


108 


Crane 


Courtenay,  Miles,  in  King  Noanett, 
F.  J.  Stimson's  romance  of  colonial 
i^erica  (1896),  a  dashing  and 
chivalrous  young  Irishman  of  the 
royalist  party,  who,  with  Blampfylde 
Moore  Carew,  is  captured  by  Crom- 
well's soldiers  and  shipped  off  to  the 
colonies.  Each,  unknown  to  the 
other,  is  in  love  with  Mistress  St. 
Aubyn.  The  character  of  Courtenay 
is  said  to  have  been  modelled  upon 
that  of  John  Boyle  O'Reilly,  with 
whom  the  author  had  often  talked 
over  the  plan  of  the  work. 

Courtly,  Sir  Hartley,  in  Dion 
Boucicaiilt's  comedy,  London  Assur- 
ance, an  elderly  fop  devoted  to  fashion 
and  engaged  to  a  young  heitess,  Grace 
Harkaway.  She  ends  by  rejecting 
him  for  his  son  Charles,  a  typical 
specimen  of  metropolitan  coolness, 
cheek,  and  "  assurance  "  whom  Sir 
Harcourt  blindly  imagines  to  be  a 
shy,  studious  and  retiring  boy. 

Coverley,  Sir  Roger  de,  in  the 
Spectator,  by  Steele  and  Addison,  a 
member  of  the  imaginary  club  under 
whose  directions  it  was  feigned  that 
the  paper  was  issued.  He  is  a  country 
gentleman  of  kindly  heart,  whimsical 
ways,  and  exquisite  courtesy,  who  is 
adored  by  his  family,  worshipped  by 
his  servants,  and  beloved  by  all  his 
acquaintances.  The  first  sketch  of 
this  character,  as  of  all  the  other 
members  of  the  pretended  club,  was 
by  Sir  Richard  Steele,  but  the  details 
were  filled  out  by  Addison  and  it  was 
Addison  who  finally  lolled  him  off 
in  No.  517,  because  he  thought  that 
Steele  had  slurred  the  good  knight's 
dignity  by  making  him  converse  too 
famiUarly  with  a  street  walker. 

What  would  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  be 
without  his  follies  and  his  charming  little 
brain-cracks?  If  the  good  knight  did  not 
call  out  to  the  people  sleeping  in  church, 
and  say  "Amen"  with  such  a  delightful 
pomposity;  if  he  did  not  make  a  speech  in 
the  assize  court  apropos  des  bottes,  and 
merely  to  show  his  dignity  to  Mr.  Spectator ; 
if  he  did  not  mistake  Madam  Doll  Tearsheet 
for  a  lady  of  quality  in  Temple  Garden;  if 
he  were  wiser  than  he  is;  if  he  had  not  his 
humour  to  salt  his  life,  and  were  but  a  mere 
English  gentleman  and  game-preserver, — 
of  what  worth  were  he  to  us?  We  love  him 
for  his  vanities  as  much  as  his  virtues. 
What  is  ridiculous  is  delightful  in  him;  we 


are  so  fond  of  him  because  we  laugh  at  him 
so." — Thackeray:    The  English  Humorists- 

Who  is  there  that  can  forget,  or  be 
Insensible  to,  the  inimitable,  nameless 
graces,  and  various  traits  of  nature  and  of 
old  English  character  in  it, — to  his  unpre- 
tending virtues  and  amiable  weaknesses, — 
to  his  modesty,  generosity,  hospitality,  and 
eccentric  whuns, — to  the  respect  of  his 
neighbors  and  the  affection  of  his  domestics, 
— to  his  wayward,  hopeless,  secret  passion 
for  his  fair  enemy,  the  widow,  in  which 
there  is  more  of  real  romance  and  true 
delicacy  than  in  a  thousand  tales  of  knight- 
errantry  (we  perceive  the  hectic  flush  of  his 
cheek,  the  faltering  of  his  tongue  in  speaking 
of  her  bewitching  airs  and  the  "whiteness 
of  her  hand") — ^to  the  havoc  he  makes 
among  the  game  in  his  neighborhood, — to 
his  speech  from  the  bench,  to  show  the 
Spectator  what  is  thought  of  him  in  the  coun- 
try,— ^to  his  unwillingness  to  be  put  up  as  a 
sign-post,  and  his  having  his  own  Ukeness 
turned  into  the  Saracen's  head, — to  his 
gentle  reproof  of  the  baggage  of  a  gypsy 
that  tells  him  "he  has  a  widow  in  his  line 
of  life," — ^to  his  doubts  as  to  the  existence 
of  witchcraft,  and  protection  of  reputed 
witches, — to  his  account  of  the  family 
pictures,  and  his  choice  of  a  chaplain, — to 
his  fallingasleep  at  church,  and  his  reproof 
of  John  Williams,  as  soon  as  he  recovered 
from  his  nap,  for  talking  in  sermon-time? — 
Hazlitt. 

Crabshaw,  Timothy,  in  Smollett's 
Adventures  of  Sir  Launcelot  Greaves ^ 
the  servant  of  Sir  Launcelot's  squire. 

Crane,  Ichabod,  in  Washington 
Irving's  short  story.  The  Legend  of 
Sleepy  Hollow,  in  The  Sketchbook,  an 
awkward  and  credulous  country 
schoolmaster,  rival  of  a  Dutch  farmer, 
a  "burly,  roaring,  roystering  blade" 
named  Brom  Van  Brunt,  for  the  hand 
of  Katherina  Van  Tassel,  but  put 
out  of  the  running  by  a  practical 
joke. 

The  cognomen  of  Crane  was  not  inappli- 
cable to  his  person.  He  was  tall,  but  exceed- 
ingly lank,  with  narrow  shoulders,  long  arms 
and  legs,  hands  that  dangled  a  mile  out  of 
his  sleeves,  feet  that  might  have  served  for 
shovels,  and  his  whole  frame  most  loosely 
hung  together.  His  head  was  small,  and 
flat  at  top,  with  huge  ears,  large,  green, 
glassy  eyes,  and  a  long,  snipe  nose,  so  that 
it  looked  like  a  weather-cock  perched  upon 
his  spindle  neck,  to  tell  which  way  the  wind 
blew.  To  see  him  striding  along  the  profile 
of  a  hill  on  a  windy  day,  with  his  clothes 
bagging  and  fluttering  about  him,  one  might 
have  mistaken  him  for  the  genius  of  famine 
descending  upon  the  earth,  or  some  scare- 
crow eloped  from  a  corn-field. — W.  Irving. 

There  is  a  story  In  the  Legends  of  Rube- 
eahl  by  Musaeus,  wherein  a  headless  horse- 
man is  introduced  similar  to  the  one  de- 


Cratchit 


109 


Crayon 


scribed  by  Washingrton  Irving,  who  very 
likely  borrowed  the  most  amusing  feature 
of  his  Legeytd  of  Sleepy  Hollow  from  that 
author. — American  Notes  and  Queries,  vol. 
i,  p.  i8o. 

Cratchit,  Bob,  in  Dickens's  ex- 
travaganza, A  Christmas  Carol,  the 
ill-paid  clerk  of  Scrooge,  unselfish, 
kindly,  living  cheerfully  in  a  four- 
room  house  with  a  large  family  on 
fifteen  bob  a  week — "  he  pocketed  on 
Saturdays  but  fifteen  copies  of  his 
Christian  name."  His  youngest 
child,  known  as  Tiny  Tim,  is  a  cripple 
whose  favorite  phrase  is,  "  God  bless 
us  all  of  us!  " 

Crawley,  Rev.  Josiah,  Vicar  of 
Hogglestock  in  Anthony  TroUope's 
The  Last  Chronicle  of  Bar  set  (1867), 
a  poor  country  clergyman,  scholarly, 
upright  and  fiercely  pious,  but  un- 
pleasantly strict  and  stem  and  driven 
almost  insane  from  wounded  pride 
and  the  pressure  of  biting  ills  which 
come  from  household  want.  He  is 
accused  of  having  stolen  a  check;  the 
facts  tell  against  him;  even  his  best 
friends  fear  that,  maddened  by  debts 
and  duns,  he  may  have  committed 
the  crime;  and  his  wife,  heroically 
patient  and  loving,  half  thinks  he 
must  be  mad  when  he  cannot  tell 
even  her  how  he  got  it. 

Crawley,  Sir  Pitt,  "  of  Great  Gaunt 
Street  and  Queen's  Crawley,  Hants," 
a  vulgar,  miserly,  ill-bred  and  ill- 
educated  gentleman  and  an  M.P.  in 
Thackeray's  novel.  Vanity  Fair. 
Though  an  aristocrat  by  birth,  all 
his  tastes  are  for  low  life.  He  is 
introduced  in  Chapter  vii  as  "a 
man  in  drab  breeches  and  gaiters, 
with  a  dirty  old  coat,  a  foul  old  neck- 
cloth lashed  round  his  bristly  neck,  a 
shining  bald  head,  a  leering  red  face, 
a  pair  of  twinkling  grey  eyes,  and  a 
mouth  perpetually  on  the  grin."  We 
are  further  told  (Chap,  ix)  that  the 
whole  baronetage,  peerage,  common- 
age of  England  did  not  contain  a 
more  cunning,  mean,  selfish,  foolish, 
and  disreputable  old  man — a  man 
who  could  not  spell  and  did  not  care 
to  read — who  had  the  habits  and  the 
cunning  of  a  boar;  whose  aim  in  life 
was  pettifogging;  who  never  had  a 


taste,  or  emotion,  or  enjo5maent,  but 
what  was  sordid  and  foul;  and  yet, 
he  had  rank,  and  honors  and  power 
somehow;  and  was  a  dignitary  of  the 
land  and  a  pillar  of  the  state." 

Charles  Kingsley  used  to  tell  a  good 
story  of  a  lady  who  confided  to  Thackeray 
that  she  liked  Vanity  Fair  exceedingly. 
'The  characters  are  so,natural,"  she  said 
'all  but  the  baronet.  Sir  Pitt  Crawley,  and 
surely  he  is  overdrawn;  it  is  impossible  to 
find  such  coarseness  in  his  rank  of  life." 
"That  character,"  the  author  smilingly 
replied,  "is  almost  the  only  exact  portrait 
in  the  book."  The  identity  of  the  prototype 
was  not  revealed  for  many  years,  but  it  has 
recently  been  asserted  that  the  character 
was  sketched  from  a  former  Lord  Rolle. 
'•'Sir  Pitt's  letters  to  Becky  were  very  badly 
spelt  and  written,"  remarks  the  gentleman 
who  puts  forward  this  theory,  "and  I  may 
say  that  I  have  in  my  possession  a  letter 
written  by  Sir  Robert  Brownrigg  to  His 
Royal  Highness  the  Duke  of  York  when 
Commander-in-Chief  of  the  British  army, 
complaining  that  a  report  received  from 
Lord  Rolle,  as  Lord-Lieutenant  of  his 
county,  was  so  badly  written  that  he  could 
not  decipher  it." — Lkwis  Melville. 

Crawley,  Pitt,  in  Thackeray's 
Vanity  Fair,  eldest  son  of  Sir  Pitt 
(see  above)  and  brother  to  Rawdon, 
but  widely  differentiated  from  either. 
He  is  neat,  prim,  precise  and  proper; 
and  of  pronounced  evangelical  views 
imtil  it  no  longer  pays  him  to  profess 
them.  At  Eton  he  was  called  "Miss 
Crawley."  He  inherited  money, 
married  money,  and  was  careful  in 
hoarding  it. 

Crawley,  Captain  Rawdon,  in 
Thackeray's  Vanity  Fair,  is  the  son 
of  Sir  Pitt  Crawley  and  the  husband 
of  Rebecca  Sharp,  a  dragoon  of  good 
height  and  good  looks  with  a  great 
voice  and  meagre  brains,  a  haw-haw 
manner,  a  hectoring  yet  not  unami- 
able  disposition,  prodigal  in  giving 
but  too  improvident  to  be  honest  with 
his  tradespeople.  Becky  for  a  period 
showed  him  how  to  live  on  nothing  a 
year,  but  he  detected  her  in  an  in- 
trigue with  Lord  Steyne,  thrashed 
that  nobleman,  and  left  his  wife. 

Crayon,  Geoffrey,  Esq.  The  pseu- 
donym under  which  Washington 
Irving  published  The  Sketchbook,  and 
which  he  occasionally  returned  to  in 
his  miscellaneous  sketches. 


Cressid 


110 


Cnimmles 


Cressid,  Creseide,  or  Cressida,  in 
mediasval  and  modem  literature  the 
jfickle  flame  of  Troilus  whose  infidelity- 
has  kinned  her  to  Faustina  and 
Messalina  and  made  her  name  a 
byword.  She  is  unknown  to  Grecian 
myth,  but  may  plausibly  be  identi- 
fied with  Briseis  of  the  Iliad,  the 
more  so  that  like  Briseis  she  was  said 
to  be  the  daughter  of  a  Trojan  priest 
Calchas.  Under  the  cognate  name 
of  Briseida  she  made  her  first  appear- 
ance in  mediaeval  poetry  as  the 
heroine  of  a  tale  by  Benoist  de  St. 
Maure,  a  trouv^re  of  the  twelfth 
century,  and  her  second  in  Guido 
delle  Colonne's  Historia  Trojana. 
From  Guido,  the  story  passed  to 
Boccaccio,  who  substituted  the  mod- 
em name,  and  thence  was  adopted 
into  English  literature  in  the  Troilus 
and  Creseide  of  Chaucer  (1380)  and 
the  Troilus  and  Cressida  of  Shake- 
speare (1609).    See  Troilus. 

Shakespeare's  treatment  of  Chaucer's 
heroine  Cressida  is  a  shock  to  any  lover  of 
the  early  poet's  work.  To  have  the  beauti- 
ful Cressida, — hesitating,  palpitating  like 
the  nightingale  before  her  sin,  driven  by  force 
of  hard  circumstances  which  she  could  not 
control  into  unfaithfulness  to  her  love, — 
to  have  this  Cressida  whom  Chaucer  spared 
for  very  ruth,  set  before  us  as  a  mere  shame- 
less wanton,  making  eyes  at  all  the  men  she 
sees  and  showing  her  looseness  in  the  move- 
ment of  every  limb,  is  a  terrible  blow. — 
F.  J.  Furnivall:  The  Leopold  Shakespeare 
(1877). 

Crochet,  Squire,  in  Peacock's  satiri- 
cal novel,  Crotchet  Castle,  a  retired 
man  of  business  who  withdraws  into 
the  country  and  gathers  aroimd  him 
a  company  of  eccentrics — all  carica- 
tures of  famous  men  of  the  day. 

Crocodile,  Lady  Kitty,  in  Samuel 
Foote's  comedy  A  Trip  to  Calais 
(1777),  a  caricature  of  Elizabeth 
Chudleigh,  so-called  Duchess  of  King- 
ston, who  after  the  Duke's  death  was 
tried  for  bigamy.  The  House  of 
Lords  found  her  guilty  of  having 
inveigled  the  Duke  into  a  marriage 
while  she  was  lawfully  the  wife  of  the 
Earl  of  Bristol,  but  she  succeeded  in 
escaping  punishment  by  pleading  the 
benefit  of  the  peerage.  Her  entirely 
logical  argument  was  that  if  she  were 
not  the  wife  of  the  Duke  she  was  the 


wife  of  the  earl  and  entitled  to  the 
privileges  of  her  rank.  Abandoning 
England  for  the  continent  she  con- 
tinued her  brilliant  but  scandalous 
career  at  many  royal  courts,  finally 
opening  a  salon  in  Paris  which  was 
frequented  by  persons  of  rank  and 
talent.  Thackeray  is  thought  to 
have  had  her  career  in  mind  when 
he  drew  his  Beatrix  Esmond,  espe- 
cially in  her  final  avatar  as  Baroness 
Bernstein. 

Croftangry,  Chrystal,  the  feigned 
editor  of  Scott's  Chronicles  of  the 
Canongate.  According  to  Lockhart 
he  was  drawn  from  Sir  Walter's 
father,  "  the  fretful  patient  at  the 
deathbed  "  being  a  living  picture. 

Crowe,  Captain,  in  Smollett's  novel, 
Adventures  of  Sir  Launcelot  Greaves 
(1760),  the  attendant  squire  upon  the 
Quixotic  hero  when  he  starts  out  to 
reform  the  world.  The  former  com- 
mander of  a  merchant  ship  in  the 
Mediterranean  trade,  innocently  ig- 
norant of  life  ashore,  he  was  admir- 
ably fitted  to  play  the  part  of  a 
modem  Sancho  Panza.  Smollett  thus 
describes  him: 

He  was  an  excellent  seaman — brave, 
active,  friendly  in  his  way,  and  scrupulously 
honest,  but  as  little  acquainted  with  the 
world  as  a  sucking  child;  whimsical,  impa- 
tient, and  so  impetuous  that  he  could  not 
help  breaking  in  upon  the  conversation 
whatever  it  might  be,  with  repeated  inter- 
ruptions that  seemed  to  burst  upon  him  by 
involuntary  impulse.  When  he  himself 
attempted  to  speak,  he  never  finished  his 
period,  but  made  such  a  number  of  abrupt 
transitions  that  his  discourse  seemed  to 
be  an  unconnected  series  of  unfinished 
sentences. 

Croye,  Isabelle,  Countess  de,  in 

Scott's  historical  romance,  Quentin 
Durward  (1823),  a  ward  of  Charles 
the  Bold,  Duke  of  Burgundy,  who 
fled  to  the  court  of  Louis  XI  in 
France  to  escape  from  a  distasteful 
marriage.  See  Durward,  Quentin. 
Crummies,  Mr.  Vincent,  in  Dick- 
ens's novel,  Nicholas  Nickleby,  actor- 
manager  of  a  company  of  strolling 
players  which  is  joined  by  Nicholas 
and  Smike.  He  is  an  eccentric  but 
not  unkindly  gentleman,  humorously 
discoursing  the  jargon  of  his  trade. 
His   family   consists   of   a   wife,    a 


Cnmcher 


111 


Cunizza 


tragedy  queen  full  of  benevolence,  a 
son  Percy  and  two  daughters,  the 
younger  of  whom,  Ninetta,  is  known 
on  the  playbills  as  the  Infant  Phe- 
nomenon (q.v.). 

Mr.  Crummies  and  the  whole  of  his 
theatrical  business  is  an  admirable  case  of 
that  first  and  most  splendid  quality  in 
Dickens — I  mean  the  art  of  making  some- 
thing which  we  call  pompous  and  dull, 
becoming  in  literature  pompous  and  delight- 
ful.— G.  K.  Chesterton:  Appreciations  of 
Dickens. 

Cruncher,  Jerry,  in  Dickens's  Tale 
of  Two  Cities,  an  odd-job  man  at 
Telson's  bank  in  London  and  also  a 
resurrection  man.  His  wife,  a  pious 
woman,  is  distressed  at  the  nature  of 
his  nocturnal  occupation,  and,  re- 
monstrance being  useless,  falls  to 
prayers  and  supplications  to  heaven 
on  bended  knee.  Cruncher,  though 
no  believer,  has  a  vague  alarm  at  her 
"  flopping  against  him  "  and  resorts 
to  curses  and  even  violence  in  self- 
defence. 

Crusoe,  Robinson,  hero  of  a  novel 
by  Daniel  Defoe,  The  Life  and 
Strange,  Surprising  Adventures  of 
Robinson  Crusoe  of  York,  Mariner 
(17 19),  and  of  its  sequel.  The  Further 
Adventures  of  Robinson  Crusoe  (17 19). 
Robinson  nms  away  to  sea  in  his 
boyhood;  is  captured  by  the  corsairs; 
lives  for  a  period  in  Brazil;  sets  sail 
from  San  Salvador  for  the  coast  of 
Africa,  is  shipwrecked  and  washed 
ashore  (the  only  survivor)  on  an 
uninhabited  island  in  the  Caribbean 
Se^  near  the  mouth  of  the  Orinoco 
River.  There  he  lives  for  twenty- 
eight  years  in  a  solitude  that  was 
broken  only  toward  the  last  by  the 
presence  of  a  fugitive  savage  whom 
he  named  Friday  (q.v.).  Finally, 
both  he  and  Friday  were  rescued  by 
savages.  In  theme  rather  than  in 
incident  the  story  bears  some  resem- 
blance to  that  of  Alexander  Selkirk 
(q.v.),  whose  narrative  of  an  enforced 
stay  upon  Juan  Fernandez  had  ap- 
peared in  1712  and  whom  Defoe  had 
seen  and  conversed  with.  Selkirk, 
however,  was  only  one  of  many 
instances  of  mariners  being  wrecked 
or  purposely  abandoned  in  an  unin- 
habited island,  and  the  situation  was 


ready  for  any  master  genius  who 
could  profit  by  it.  Defoe  himself, 
in  his  Serious  Reflections  during  the 
Life  of  Robinson  Crusoe  (1720), 
assures  us  that  the  book  had  an 
allegorical  meaning — "  a  kind  of  type 
of  what  the  dangers  and  vicissitudes 
and  surprising  escapes  of  his  own  life 
had  been." 

[Defoe]  was  essentially  a  bluff,  masculine, 
matter-of-fact  man,  and  he  tells  his  story 
in  a  matter-of-fact  way.  Prosaic  accuracy 
of  detail  serves  him  perhaps  better  than 
heroics.  The  man  he  paints  is  a  sturdy, 
plain-minded  seaman,  who  sets  himself  to 
solve  the  problem  of  how  to  live  imder  con- 
ditions which  would  have  overwhelmed  a 
more  sensitive  mind.  It  is  the  indomitable 
courage  of  Crusoe  which  charms  us.  He  is 
typically  Anglo-Saxon  in  his  stoUd  endur- 
ance of  fate,  his  practical  grasp  of  circum- 
stances, his  ingenuity,  his  fertility  of  re- 
source, his  determination  to  make  the  best 
of  his  unfortunate  situation.  He  behaves 
after  the  manner  of  his  race.  Having  by 
chance  become  the  monarch  of  a  desert 
island,  he  sets  himself  to  govern  it  to  the 
best  of  his  ability,  and  to  arrange  his  life 
with  decent  orderliness. — W.  J.  Dawson: 
Makers  of  English  Fiction. 

Crusoe's  Island.  Until  recently 
it  has  been  imagined  that  because 
Daniel  Defoe  owed  the  idea  of  his 
Robinson  Crusoe  to  conversations 
held  with  Alexander  Selkirk,  who  had 
been  shipwrecked  on  the  island  of 
Juan  Fernandez,  therefore  that  was 
the  island  on  which  his  own  hero 
repeated  the  experiences  of  Selkirk. 
But  Juan  Fernandez  is  located  in  the 
Pacific  Ocean  off  the  coast  of  Chili. 
All  Crusoe's  statements  show  that 
he  was  wrecked  in  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
on  an  island  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Orinoco  River.  This  island  is  now 
positively  identified  as  Tobago,  which 
is  situated  off  the  coast  of  Venezuela, 
a  few  miles  from  Trinidad. 

Cunegonde,  heroine  of  Voltaire's 
satirical    tale,     Candide.      See    also 

KUNIGUNDE. 

Cunizza,  heroine  of  Robert  Brown- 
ing's poem,  Sordello,  who  is  called 
Palma  until  her  true  name  is  revealed 
at  the  close  of  the  poem.  She  was  a 
historical  character,  sister  of  Ezzelino 
III.  Dante  places  her  in  Paradise, 
ix,  32.  Sordello  had  an  intrigue  with 
her  while  she  was  married  to  her  first 
husband  (Dante:    Purgatory,  vi). 


Dale 


112 


D'Amville 


Dale,  Laetitia,  In  George  Mere- 
dith's novel,  The  Egoist,  a  romantic 
girl  whose  father,  a  half  pay  ofl&cer, 
rents  a  cottage  on  Sir  Willoughby 
Patteme's  estate.  She  adores  Sir 
Willoughby  and  he  basks  in  her  adora- 
tion until  longer  acquaintance  opens 
her  eyes  to  his  true  character.  See 
Patterne  and  Middleton,  Clara. 

Dale,  Lily,  heroine  of  Anthony 
TroUope's  novel.  The  Small  House  at 
Allington  (1864). 

One  of  the  characters  which  readers  of 
my  novels  have  liked  the  best.  In  the  love 
with  which  she  has  been  greeted  I  have 
hardly  joined  with  much  enthusiasm,  feeling 
that  she  is  something  of  a  French  prig.  She 
became  first  engaged  to  a  snob  who  jilted 
her;  and  then,  though  in  truth  she  loved 
another  man  who  was  hardly  good  enough, 
she  could  not  extricate  herself  sufficiently 
from  the  collapse  of  her  first  great  misfor- 
tune to  be  able  to  make  up  her  mind  to  be 
wife  of  one  whom,  though  she  loved  him, 
she  did  not  altogether  reverence.  Prig  as 
she  was.  she  made  her  way  into  the  hearts 
of  many  readers,  both  young  and  old;  so 
that  from  that  time  to  this,  I  have  been 
continually  honored  with  letters;  the  purport 
of  which  has  always  been  to  beg  me  to 
marry  Lily  Dale  to  Johnny  Eames. 

Dalgamo,   Lord   Malcolm   of,    in 

Scott's  historical  romance,  The  For- 
tunes of  Nigel  (1822),  a  profligate 
young  nobleman,  son  of  the  Scotch 
Earl  of  Huntinglen.  Pretending 
friendship  for  the  inexperienced  Nigel, 
he  lures  him  into  evil  resorts  and  gives 
him  ruinous  advice.  When  his  true 
character  is  exposed  by  Lady  Her- 
mione,  whom  he  had  seduced,  he 
bears  his  disgrace  with  calm  effron- 
tery, going  through  the  forms  of  mar- 
riage with  the  lady  only  to  secure  the 
means  of  burning  her  house  to  ashes. 
Dalgetty,  Rittmaster  Dugald,  in 
Scott's  historical  novel,  A  Legend  of 
Montrose  (18 19),  the  Laird  of  Drum- 
thwacket,  a  soldier  of  fortune  who 
lets  out  his  sword  to  the  highest 
bidder,  and  after  sundry  exploits  is 
retained  in  the  service  of  the  Earl  of 
Monteith.  Brave  and  always  ready 
of  resource  he  is  a  vainglorious  brag- 
gart and  an  amusing  pedant.  The 
original  of  Dalgetty  was  probably 
Munro,  member  of  a  band  of  Scotch 
and  English  auxiliaries  in  the  island 


of  Swinemunde  in  1630,  who  wrote 
the  story  of  the  campaign. 

The  general  idea  of  the  character  is 
familiar  to  our  comic  dramatists  after  the 
Restoration,  and  may  be  said  in  some  meas- 
ure to  be  compounded  of  Captain  Fluellen 
and  Bobadil;  but  the  ludicrous  combination 
of  the  soldado  with  the  divinity  student  of 
Mareschal  College  is  entirely  original. — 
Jeffrey. 

Dugald  Is  a  garrulous  pedant  and  may 
be  styled  one  of  Scott's  bores,  but  he  never 
bores  us,  whether  he  sets  forth  his  simple 
reasons  for  serving  with  the  king's  army  and 
not  with  the  Covenanters;  or  criticises  the 
various  services  of  Europe;  or  lectures  on 
the  propriety  of  fortifying  the  sconce  of 
Drumsnab ;  or  faces  Argyll  in  Inverary  or 
masters  him  in  the  dungeon;  or  wheedles 
the  Presbyterian  chaplain;  or  mocks  the 
bows  and  arrows  of  his  allies,  the  Children 
of  the  Mist;  or  does  deeds  of  derring-do  at 
Inverlochy,  or  swaggers  about  in  the  fresh 
glories  of  his  title  of  Knight  Banneret. — 
Andrew  Lang:    Sir  Walter  Scott. 

There  is  good  warrant  for  the  character 
of  Dalgetty.  The  name  itself  was  borrowed 
from  that  old  acquaintance  of  Scott's  boy- 
hood. Captain  Dalgetty  of  Prestonpans, 
"who  had  fought  in  all  the  German  wars, 
but  found  very  few  to  listen  to  his  tales  of 
military  feats."  "He  formed,"  says  Scott, 
"a  sort  of  alliance  with  me,  and  I  used  in- 
variably to  attend  him  for  the  pleasure  of 
hearing  these  communications."  The  real 
antecedents,  however,  out  of  which  grew 
the  Dalgetty  as  we  knew  him,  are  to  be 
found  in  the  memoirs  of  the  Scottish  mer- 
cenaries of  the  period.  Two  in  particular 
were  used  by  Scott,  both  of  them  written, 
he  remarks,  very  much  in  the  humour  of  the 
doughty  captain,  the  Memoirs  of  Lieutenant 
Colonel  Robert  Munro  and  of  Sir  James 
Turner.— W.  S.  CROCKETT :  The  Scott 
Originals,  p.  273. 

D'Amville,  in  The  Atheist's  Tragedy 
(161 1),  by  Cyril  Toumeur,  a  man 
of  good  abilities  and  originally  good 
disposition  who  becomes  a  human 
fiend  through  unbelief  in  revealed 
religion,  is  hurried  on  from  crime  to 
crime  and  finally  kills  himself  by  acci- 
dent. D'Amville  himself  (the  name 
may  have  been  meant  to  suggest 
Damn  Villain)  attributes  his  atheism 
to  the  impression  made  upon  him  by 
the  _  worthlessness  of  his  brother's 
Puritan  chaplain.  When  his  accom- 
plice in  a  midnight  murder  is  terri- 
fied by  a  storm  of  thunder  and  light- 
ning he  calmly  philosophises  on  the 
origin  of  such  phenomena.  He  justi- 
fies even  incest  by  the  general  liberty 


Dantes 


113 


Darnel 


which  nature  allows  to  her  creatures. 
His  reason  is  finally  overthrown  by 
the  death  of  his  younger  son,  and  the 
collapse  of  all  his  schemes. 

Dantes,  Edmond,  hero  of  Alexander 
Dumas'  romance,  The  Count  of  Monte 
Christo. 

A  young  sailor  in  Marseilles  in  1815 
just  before  the  *'  Hundred  Days," 
Edmond  has  won  the  captainship  of 
the  merchantman  Pharaon  and  the 
promised  hand  of  Catalan  Mercedes. 
He  has  two  disappointed  rivals;  one 
covets  the  ship,  the  other  the  girl. 
They  trump  up  a  charge  that  he  is  a 
Bonapartist  emissary  carrying  letters 
between  Ella  and  the  mainland.  He  is 
sentenced  to  life  imprisonment  in  the 
Chateau  d'lf,  which  faces  the  Medi- 
terranean. There  he  digs  a  secret  pas- 
sage to  the  room  of  a  fellow  prisoner, 
the  Abb6,  a  Catholic  priest  and  a 
supposed  madman,  who  confides  to 
him  the  secret  of  a  buried  treasure 
on  the  barren  island  of  Monte  Christo. 
With  his  knowledge  Dantes  escapes. 
He  unearths  the  treasure  and  bursts 
upon  astonished  Paris  as  the  mysteri- 
ous millionaire  Count  of  Monte 
Christo.  He  devotes  the  remainder 
of  his  life  to  dazzling  the  world  at 
large,  rewarding  his  friends  and  pun- 
ishing one  by  one  the  enemies  who 
had  been  responsible  for  his  captivity. 

Dapper,  a  clerk  in  The  Alchemist, 
a  comedy  by  Ben  Jonson.  ^  Face 
and  Subtle  swindle  him  by  feigning 
that  the  Queen  of  the  Fairies  is  his 
aunt. 

This  reminds  us  of  the  extreme  doting 
attachment  which  the  queen  of  the  fairies 
is  represented  to  have  taken  for  Dapper. — 
Sir  W.  Scott. 

Dapple,  the  name  of  Sancho's  ass, 
in  Cervantes's  romance  of  Don 
Quixote. 

Darby  and  Joan,  hero  and  heroine 
of  a  ballad,  The  Happy  Old  Couple, 
which  has  been  attributed  to  Mat- 
thew Prior  but  probably  antedates 
him.  Another  claimant  has  been  put 
forward  in  the  person  of  Henry  Wood- 
fall,  the  printer.  According  to  Tim- 
berley,  Woodfall  was  an  apprentice 
of  John  Darby,  a  printer  of  Bartholo- 
mew Close,  who  died  in  1730,  and 
8 


whose  devotion  to  his  wife  Joan  was 
notorious  in  the  locality.  This 
"  happy  couple,"  in  their  simple  con- 
tentment and  dislike  for  change,  pre- 
sent some  analogies  to  the  Philemon 
and  Baucis  of  classic  myth. 

Darcy,  Fitz  William,  hero  of  Jane 
Austen's  novel,  Pride  and  Prejtuiice, 
a  young  country  gentleman  of  wealth 
and  family,  dignified  and  courtly, 
quite  conscious  of  his  superior  station 
in  life  but  still  dowered  with  many 
excellent  qualities,  including  that  of 
loyal  devotion  to  the  heroine,  Eliza- 
beth Bennett.  She  in  her  part  is  at 
first  strongly  prejudiced  against  the 
pride  which  she  eventually  succeeds 
in  humbHng  and  bringing  to  her  feet. 

Philip  Darcy  is  Pride;  Elizabeth  Bennett 
is  Prejudice;  and  the  plot  is  the  struggle  of 
their  mutual  attraction  against  their  mutual 
repulsion,  ending  in  love  and  marriage. 
Elizabeth  has  been  playfully  pronounced  a 
charming  being  by  her  creatress,  who  per- 
haps made  her  partly  in  her  own  image. 
She  is  not  supremely  beautiful,  but  has 
force  and  charm  of  character,  excellent 
sense  and  a  lively  wit. — Goldwin  Smith. 

Darling,  Dolly,  heroine  of  Richard 
Blackmore's  novel,  Springhaven 
(1887),  with  whom  Blythe  Scudamore 
is  in  love. 

A  very  charming  maiden,  and  just  as 
romantic  and  silly  as  a  charming,  idle 
maiden  may  be  without  harm  or  shame. 
No  real  man  could  escape  being  Dolly's 
slave;  if  Mr.  Blackmore  had  had  her  alive. 
In  his  study,  he  would  never  have  dared  to 
treat  her  so  harshly  as  he  does.  He  takes 
a  mean  advantage  of  the  fact  that  Dolly  is 
either  dead  or  old  enough  to  be  past  mis- 
chief. He  sneers  at  her  little  vanities,  makes 
much  ado  about  her  little  deceits,  and  finally 
throws  on  her  shapely  shoulders  the  whole 
burden  of  her  father's  death. — N.  Y.  Nation, 
May  19,  1887. 

Damay,  Charles,  Marquis  St. 
Evremonde  in  Dickens's  Tale  of  Two 
Cities,  the  lover  and  afterwards  the 
husband  of  Lucie  Manette.  He  is 
the  physical  double  of  Sydney  Carton 
(q.v.).  The  latter  takes  advantage  of 
this  resemblance  to  sacrifice  himself 
in  his  stead. 

Darnel,  Aurelia,  in  Smollett's  novel, 
Sir  Launcelot  Greaves,  is  described  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott  {British  Novelists) 
as  "by  far  the  most  feminine,  and, 
at  the  same  time,  lady-like  person  to 
whom  the  author  has  introduced  us." 


Darrel 


114 


David 


Darrel,  the  titular  hero  of  Irving  A. 
Bacheller's  novel,  Darrel  of  the  Blessed 
Isles  (1903),  an  old  clock- tinker  and  a 
philosopher  familiar  with  Shakespeare 
Milton  and  the  Bible,  from  whose 
perusal  he  has  drawn  wisdom,  charity 
and  contentment.  The  Blessed  Isles 
of  the  title  refer  to  the  land  of  poetry 
and  imagination  in  which  Barrel's 
mind  continually  dwells. 

Darrell,  William,  the  Lord  of  Little- 
cote,  hero  of  a  ballad  introduced  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott  into  tlie  fifth  canto 
of  Rokeby.  It  is  founded  on  a  legend 
current  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  time  and 
attached  to  Littlecote  Hall  in  Wilt- 
shire. A  nurse  taken  blind-folded  to 
the  hall,  assists  at  the  birth  of  a  child, 
and  witnesses  the  unnatural  father 
throw  it  to  its  death  in  a  blazing  fire. 
Despite  all  efforts  to  muffle  her  both 
going  and  coming,  she  secured  a  clue 
and  denounced  the  murderer.  Scott 
tones  down  the  horror  of  the  story. 
A  gray  friar  is  sent  for  to  shrive  a 
dying  woman;  he  is  conducted  to  the 
mansion  with  his  eyes  bandaged,  per- 
forms his  sacred  function  to  one  in 
apparent  health,  and  next  day  the 
countryside  mourns  the  sudden  death 
of  the  mistress  of  Littlecote  Hall. 
Hubert  Hall,  in  Society  in  the  Eliza- 
bethan Age,  has  rescued  Wild  Darrell 
from  much  of  the  slander  which 
pollutes  his  name.  See  American 
Notes  and  Queries,  March  25, 1889. 

Dartle,  Rosa,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield,  companion  to  Mrs.  Steer- 
forth  and  hopelessly  in  love  with  her 
son  James.  "  She  had  black  hair  and 
eager  eyes,"  writes  Copperfield,  "  and 
was  thin  and  had  a  scar  upon  her  lip. 
I  concluded  in  my  own  mind  that  she 
was  thirty  and  wished  to  be  married. 
She  was  a  little  dilapidated  like  a  house 
with  having  been  so  long  to  let:  her 
thinness  seemed  to  be  the  effect  of  some 
wasting  fire  within  her  which  found  a 
vent  in  her  gaunt  eyes."  The  scar  was 
the  work  of  Steerforth  when  a  child. 
It  is  the  index  to  Miss  Dartle's  sus- 
ceptibilities and  owns  some  allegiance 
to  the  hand  that  caused  it. 

Dashwood,  Elinor,  the  heroine  of 
Jane  Austen's  Sense  and  Sensibility, 
who  represents  the  "  sense  "  in  the 


title  as  Marianne  represents  the 
**  sensibiHty."  This  clever  and  amia- 
ble pair  are  the  stepsisters  of  John 
Dashwood,  a  meanly  avaricious  man, 
ever  fearful  lest  his  income  should  be 
encroached  upon  by  them.  He  is 
married  to  a  selfish,  scheming  wife. 
A  painful  disillusion  shows  Marianne 
Dashwood  that  if  a  girl  is  gifted  with 
sensitive  or  romantic  feelings  she  had 
better  keep  them  under  control  and 
disguise  them  from  the  public  gaze; 
and  finally,  after  her  brief  period  of 
romance  is  over,  she  puts  up  very 
quietly  with  a  husband  of  forty. 

Dass,  Durga,  in  the  story  of 
Gemini,  in  Rudyard  Kipling's  volume, 
In  Black  and  White,  is  one  of  twins. 
Ram  Dass  being  the  other.  Through 
a  remarkable  resemblance  between 
the  two,  Durga  is  the  victim  of  a 
comedy  of  errors  which  enables  his 
brother  to  fleece  him  out  of  all  his 
possessions. 

David,  King  of  Israel,  whose  story 
is  told  in  I  and  II  Samuel  and  in 
I  Chronicles,  is  a  favorite  character 
in  the  literature  and  drama  of  medi- 
aeval and  later  Christendom.  Follow- 
ing the  Old  Testament  writers  he  is 
represented  as  in  youth  standing  high 
in  the  favor  of  the  Almighty:  "  the 
Lord  hath  sought  him  a  man  after 
J^is  own  heart  "  (I  Samuel  xiii  14), 
though  in  maturity  he  falls  away  by 
grievous  sin,  is  chastened  by  retribu- 
tory  affliction  and  restored  to  favor 
by  sincere  repentance. 

David  and  Goliath  (1630)  a  narra- 
tive poem  by  Michael  Drayton,  shows 
the  yoimg  shepherd  in  his  mighty 
youth. 

David  and  Bethsabe  (1598),  a  drama 
by  George  Peele,  represents  the  entire 
episode  of  Uriah's  wife,  from  David's 
first  meeting  with  her  to  his  bitter 
repentance.  Abraham  Cowley  wrote 
an  epic  in  4  books,  Davideis,  A  Sacred 
Poem  of  the  Troubles  of  David.  A 
more  ambitious  but  less  successful 
effort  is  Davideis,  or  the  Life  of  David, 
King  of  Israel  (17 12),  by  Thomas 
Elwood.  A  Song  to  David  (1763), 
written  by  Christopher  Smart  while 
confined  as  a  lunatic,  is  a  wild  but 
splendid  rhapsody. 


Daridson 


115 


Deans 


Davidson,  Joshua,  hero  of  a  novel 
by  Mrs.  E.  Lynn  Linton,  The  True 
History  of  Joshua  Davidson,  Christian 
Communist  (1872),  a  young  English 
workingman  who  is  really  an  avatar 
of  Christ  reincarnated  in  modem 
times  and  painfully  adjusting  him- 
self to  a  nineteenth  century  environ- 
ment. 

Daw,  Marjorie,  heroine  of  T.  B. 
Aldrich's  short  story  of  that  name 
{Atlantic  Monthly,  April,  1873),  which 
leads  up  by  a  cUmax  to  an  unforeseen 
conclusion  that  makes  a  fool  of  the 
reader  to  his  own  deUght. 

Dawkins,  John  (nicknamed  the 
Artful  Dodger),  in  Charles  Dickens's 
novel,  Oliver  Twist,  a  young  pick- 
pocket in  the  service  of  Fagin,  the 
Jew.  He  meets  Oliver  fleeing  to 
London,  gives  hiin  something  to  eat 
and  introduces  him  to  Fagin's  den. 
Although  an  adept  in  thieving  and 
all  knavery,  the  Dodger  is  finally 
caught  in  attempting  to  pick  a  pocket 
and  is  sentenced  to  transportation 
for  life. 

Deadeye  Dick,  in  Gilbert  and 
Sullivan's  comic  operetta,  H.  M.  S. 
Pinafore,  an  excellent  burlesque  of 
the  traditionary  villain  of  the  fore- 
castle. 

Deadwood  Dick,  nickname  of 
Robert  Dickey  (1840-19 12)  whose 
actual  adventures  formed  the  basis 
for  many  of  the  "  dime  novels " 
which  fed  the  imaginations  of  a 
callow  youth  in  1 860-1 880.  He  was  a 
scout  under  Gen.  George  Crook  in  the 
days  when  the  red  man  of  the  plains 
was  making  his  last  stand  against 
the  invading  white.  He  served  under 
Gen.  Alfred  H.  Terry  during  a  part  of 
that  commander's  campaigns  in  the 
foothills  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
He  became  successively  an  Indian 
agent,  a  United  States  marshal,  a 
trapper  and  a  fur  merchant  and, 
having  made  a  fortune,  lost  it  and 
died  poor. 

He  fought  Indians  for  a  good  many  years, 
and  his  hair-breadth  escapes  and  his  well- 
known  courage  made  him  dear  to  the 
writers,  who  loved  to  describe  the  hero 
dashing  madly  across  the  prairie  through  a 
flight  of  arrows  and  a  hail  of  bullets  and 
eluding  his  pursuers.     He  was  one  of  that 


dying  and  dead  galaxy  of  heroes  of  the  old 
west  that  included  Kit  Carson,  Buffalo  Bill, 
Bat  Masterson  and  others  of  the  noted 
Indian  and  gun  fighters  who  passed  with 
the  red  man,  the  cow  camps  and  the  buffalo. 
In  picturesqueness  he  was  not  equaled  even 
by  the  skin-shirted,  wide-hatted  Cody.  If 
the  dime-novel  writer  could  have  created 
an  ideal  character  in  the  flesh  Deadwood 

Dick   would  have  been  that  character. 

Obituary  in  Utica  Globe. 

Deans,  Davie,  in  Scott's  novel.  The 
Heart  of  Midlothian,  a  poor  cowfeeder 
at  Edinburgh,  affectionately  known 
as  Douce  Davie,  full  of  whims  and 
follies,  but  rigid  and  unbending  in 
his  adherence  to  what  seemed  to  him 
the  only  righteous  course,  and  a 
staunch  Presbyterian.  He  is  the 
father  of  Jeanie  and  EfiSe. 

The  very  pearl  of  belated  Covenanters. 
He  is  "lifted"  straight  from  that  honest, 
brave,  absurd  Peter  or  Patrick  Walker  who 
suffered  torture  as  a  mere  boy  during  the 
Restoration  and  lived  well  into  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  compiling  his  biographies 
of  covenanting  characters,  such  as  Cameron 
and  Peden.  Walker  was  to  them  what 
Izaak  Walton  was  to  the  great  divines  of 
the  Church  of  England  in  his  long  and  well- 
contented  day.  How  true  Davie  Deans  is 
to  his  model  the  reader  may  discover  in  Mr. 
Harry  Fleming's  Saints  of  the  Covenant,  a 
reprint  of  Walker's  biographies  with  notes. 
— Andrew  Lang:    Sir  Walter  Scott. 

Deans,  Effie  (Euphemia),  daughter 
of  Davie  by  his  second  wife,  a  pretty, 
vain,  foolish  girl  who  is  betrayed  by 
George  Staunton  and  imprisoned  for 
child  murder.  After  her  half-sister 
Jeanie  has  procured  her  pardon,  she 
marries  Staunton  and,  having  blazed 
for  some  years  in  the  fashionable 
world  as  Lady  Staunton,  retired  in 
her  widowhood  to  severe  seclusion  in 
a  convent. 

Deans,  Jeanie,  daughter  of  Davie 
by  his  first  wife,  who  saves  her  half- 
sister  Effie  by  walking  from  Edin- 
burgh to  London  to  plead  her  cause 
with  Queen  Caroline. 

The  prototype  in  real  life  of  Jeanie 
Deans  was  Helen  Walker  (1712-1791) 
the  daughter  of  a  small  farmer  in  the 
parish  of  Irongray,  Dumfriesshire. 
The  very  day  of  her  sister's  condem- 
nation she  got  a  petition  drawn  up 
and  afterwards  walked  the  whole  dis- 
tance to  London  barefoot.  There 
with  the  help  of  John,  Duke  of  Argyle, 


Debree 


116 


Delia 


she  secured  a  pardon.  One  of  the  last 
acts  of  Scott's  Hfe  was  to  raise  a 
tombstone  to  her  memory  in  Irongray 
churchyard. 

Jeanie  Deans,  to  our  thinking.  Is  the 
cream  and  perfection  of  Scott's  work.  A 
creature  absolutely  pure,  absolutely  truth- 
ful, yet  of  a  tenderness,  a  forbearance,  and 
long-suffering  beyond  the  power  of  man,  wil- 
ling to  die  rather  than  lie,  but  resolute  that 
the  truth  her  nature  has  forced  her  to  speak 
shall  not  be  used  for  harm  if  her  very  life 
can  prevent  it.  There  is  not  one  scene  in 
which  this  high  valour  of  the  heart,  this 
absolute  goodness,  fails  her;  nor  is  there  one 
in  which  she  departs  ever  so  little  from  the 
lowUness  of  her  beginning.  She  is  as  little 
daunted  by  the  Duke  and  the  Queen  as  she 
is  by  the  other  difl&culties  which  she  has 
met  and  surmounted  with  that  tremulous 
timidity  of  courage  which  belongs  to  nerves 
highly  strung;  nay,  she  has  even  a  certain 
modest  pleasure  in  the  society  of  these 
potentates,  her  simple  soul  meeting  them 
with  awe,  yet  with  absolute  frankness; 
making  no  commonplace  attempt  at  equal- 
ity.— Blackwood's  Magazine,  August,  187 1, 
p.  250. 

Debree,  "Walter,  hero  of  a  tale,  The 
New  Priest  of  Conception  Bay  (1858), 
by  Robert  Lowell.  A  Protestant 
clergyman,  he  is  converted  to  Cath- 
olicism and  takes  orders  as  a  priest, 
but  repenting,  determines  to  return 
to  his  fold  and  his  wife;  is  overtaken 
by  a  snowstorm  and  perishes.  His 
lifeless  body  is  taken  to  his  wife.  The 
story,  which  is  poetical  and  pathetic, 
is  ruined  by  the  fact  that  a  married 
man  cannot  take  orders  in  the  Cath- 
oUc  church  unless  his  wife  does  the 
same. 

Dedlock,  Sir  Leicester,  Bar't,  in 
Dickens 's  novel ,  Bleak  House  ( 1 8  53  ) , 
a  generous  and  high-minded  aristo- 
crat intensely  conscious  of  his  rank 
and  jealous  of  his  family  honor,  mar- 
ried to  Lady  Honoria,  a  beautiful 
and  stately  woman  of  inferior  rank. 
Under  a  cold  exterior  she  hides  an 
ever-present  consciousness  of  a 
wretched  episode  in  her  past  when, 
engaged  but  not  married  to  a  gay 
rake  named  Captain  Hawdon,  she 
became  the  mother  of  the  girl  now 
known  as  Esther  Svmimerson.  Find- 
ing that  her  secret  is  on  the  eve  of 
discovery  she  flees  from  her  home  and 
dies  at  the  gate  of  a  squalid  graveyard 
where  the  father  of  her  child  is  buried. 

Dedlow,  George,  hero  of  a  story, 


The  Case  of  George  Dedlow  (1900),  by 
Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell.  He  is  repre- 
sented as  a  soldier  who  had  all  his 
limbs  amputated  and  nearly  lost  his 
sense  of  identity.  The  case  was  widely 
accepted  as  genuine,  and  author  and 
publishers  were  embarrassed  by  re- 
ceiving subscriptions  from  sympa- 
thetic readers. 

Deerslayer,  in  Cooper's  novel  of 
that  name,  a  nickname  for  Natty 
Bumppo.    See  Bumppo. 

Deever,  Danny,  subject  of  a  poem 
of  that  name  in  Rudyard  Kipling's 
Barrack-Room  Ballads.  Danny  Dee- 
ver is  hanged  in  the  presence  of  his 
regiment  for  having  shot  a  sleeping 
comrade. 

Defarge,  Madame  Therese,  in  A 
Tale  of  Two  Cities  (1859),  by  Charles 
Dickens,  a  terrible  old  woman  who 
sits  quietly  knitting  all  day  long,  but 
is  an  eager  and  watchful  accomplice 
of  her  husband,  the  wineseller  Ernest 
Defarge,  ringleader  of  the  Revolu- 
tionists in  the  suburb  of  St.  Antoine 
in  Paris. 

Delectable  Mountains,  in  Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's  Progress  (1678),  a  range  of 
hills  whose  summits  commanded  a 
view  of  the  Celestial  City,  the  object 
of  the  Pilgrim's  quest.  The  suggestion 
came  from  the  Old  Testament: 
"  When  the  morning  was  up,  they 
had  him  to  the  top  of  the  house,  and 
bid  him  look  south.  So  he  did  and 
behold  at  a  great  distance  he  saw  a 
most  pleasant  mountainous  country, 
beautified  with  woods,  vineyards, 
fruits  of  all  sorts,  flowers  also  with 
springs  and  fountains  very  delectable 
to  behold  "  (Isaiah  xxxiii,  16,  17). 
Christian,  with  his  companion  Hope- 
ful, climbs  to  the  top  of  the  moun- 
tains. Finding  shepherds  there  feed- 
ing their  flocks,  they  ask  "  whose 
delectable  mountains  are  these  and 
whose  be  the  sheep  that  feed  upon 
them? "  •  The  shepherds  answer, 
"  These  mountains  are  Emanuel's 
lambs  and  they  are  within  sight  of  his 
city  and  the  sheep  are  his,  and  he  laid 
down  his  life  for  them.'' 

Delia,  a  name  sometimes  given  to 
Diana,  from  her  birthplace  Delos, 
just  as  her  fellow-citizen  Apollo  is 


Delobelle 


117 


Demetrius 


styled  Delias.  Virgil  has  called  a 
shepherdess  in  the  Eclogues  by  this 
name  and  it  is  frequently  used  in 
amatory  and  pastoral  poetry  as  the 
generic  name  for  a  sweetheart. 
Among  the  cases  of  real  women  who 
have  been  thus  designated  by  adoring 
poets  the  following  are  the  best 
known: 

1.  The  ladylove  of  the  Roman 
Theocritus  whose  real  name  is  con- 
jectured to  have  been  Plania  (from 
planus),  for  which  the  Greek  ^v^ia 
is  an  equivalent,  both  words  signi- 
fying plain,  clear,  manifest. 

2.  The  Miss  Dash  wood  celebrated 
in  James  Hammond's  Elegies.  She 
rejected  his  suit  and  died  unmarried 
in  1779. 

3.  William  Shenstone  addressed 
his  love  poetry,  including  his  Pastoral 
Ballad,  to  a  lady  whose  real  name  has 
been  effectively  hidden  under  this  title. 

4.  William  Cowper  wrote  a  num- 
ber of  verses  to  DeHa,  whom  it  is  easy 
to  identify  as  his  cousin  Theodora. 
She  was  in  love  with  him,  but  her 
father,  Ashley  Cowper,  forbade  the 
union,  nominally  on  the  ground  of 
consanguinity,  really,  as  Southey 
thinks,  because  he  saw  that  the  poet 
was  unfit  for  business  and  not  likely 
to  be  able  to  support  a  wife.  Theo- 
dora remained  unmarried  and  never 
forgot  her  lover.  She  preserved  his 
letters  tiU  her  death  at  an  extreme  old 
age.  Her  sister.  Lady  Hesketh,  was 
subsequently  one  of  Cowper's  most 
intimate  friends. 

5.  Samuel  Daniels  addressed  his 
sonnets  to  a  lady  whom  he  calls  Delia, 
and  who  is  imderstood  to  have  refused 
him  for  a  wealthier  lover. 

Delobelle^  Desiree,  in  Daudet's 
novel,  Froment  Jeune  et  Rissler  Aine, 
a  deformed  girl,  daughter  of  a  pre- 
tentious imbecile  actor.  She  is  poor, 
stunted,  laborious,  toiling  at  a  small 
industry;  she  is  in  love,  is  rejected, 
she  tries  to  drown  herself,  she  dies. 
*'  The  sequence  of  ideas,"  says 
Andrew  Lang,  "  is  in  Dickens's  vein; 
but  read  the  tale  and  I  think  you 
will  see  how  little  the  thing  is  over- 
done, how  simple  and  unforced  it  is, 
compared    with    analogous    persons 


and  scenes  in  the  work  of  the  English 
master." — Essays  in  Little,  p.  124. 

DeLonge.    See  Longe,  De. 

Delorme,  Marion,  heroine  and  title 
of  a  tragedy  by  Victor  Hugo.  Writ- 
ten in  June,  1829,  its  production  was 
not  permitted  until  August  31,  1831. 

Marion  was  a  historical  character, 
a  courtesan  who  flourished  under 
Louis  XIII.  She  is  introduced  as 
repentant — purified  and  ennobled  by 
deep  love  for  Didier,  an  obscure 
youth,  naturally  generous  but  soured 
by  contact  with  the  world.  He  knows 
nothing  of  her  past  but  adores  her  as 
the  one  true  and  lovely  being  in  the 
world.  She  is  doubly  tortured  by  her 
inability  to  explain  why  she  cannot 
marry  him.  Didier  resents  the  free- 
dom with  which  the  Marquis  de 
Savemy  treats  the  lady,  his  former 
mistress.  A  duel  is  interrupted  by 
Richelieu's  guards.  Savemy  escapes 
by  feigning  death.  Didier  is  arrested, 
but  with  Marion's  assistance  scales 
the  walls  of  his  jail.  Disguised  as 
Spaniards  the  couple  join  a  troupe  of 
players.  One  day  they  are  recognized 
by  Savemy  ^  in  the  audience.  He 
reveals  Marion's  true  character  to 
Didier  who,  horror-stricken,  makes  no 
resistance  when  a  moment  later  he  is 
arrested  for  murder.  But  Savemy 
comes  forward,  throws  off  his  dis- 
guise and  proves  that  Didier  never 
murdered  him.  Both,  however,  are 
arrested  for  duelling.  Marion  pleads 
for  her  lover's  life  first  with  the  king, 
then  with  Laffermas,  who  had  made 
the  arrest.  He  agrees  to  spare  Didier 
if  she  will  gratify  his  lust.  She 
yields  but  the  sacrifice  is  in  vain. 
Didier  refused  the  pardon  so  dearly 
purchased.  He  and  Savemy  perish 
together  on  the  scaffold. 

Delville,  Mr.,  in  Fanny  Bumey's 
novd  Cecilia  (1782),  one  of  the 
guardians  of  the  heroine,  a  purse  proud 
and  haughty  gentleman,  magnificent 
and  ostentatious  in  his  manner  of 
living,  and  cultivating  an  air  of 
affable  condescension  toward  his 
inferiors. 

Demetrius,  in  Shakespeare's  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,  in  love  with 
Hermia. 


Democritus 


118 


Deronda 


Democritus,  in  Greek  history,  the 
"  Laughing  Philosopher  "  of  Abdera, 
so-called  from  his  avowed  determina- 
tion to  laugh  at  the  follies  rather  than 
weep  at  the  miseries  of  mankind. 
Robert  Burton  took  the  pseudonym 
of  Democritus  Junior  for  his  Anatomy 
of  Melancholy,  and  the  name  is  in- 
scribed on  his  monvunent  in  Christ 
Church  Cathedral. 

Dempster,  Janet,  heroine  of  George 
Eliot's  Janet's  Repentance.  Married 
to  a  brutal  drunkard  she  takes  refuge 
in  drink  against  his  ill-usage,  and  is 
rescued  through  the  kind  offices  of 
the  Rev.  Edgar  Tryan. 

Dence,  Jael,  in  Charles  Reade's 
novel,  Put  Yourself  in  his  Place,  a 
daughter  of  the  people,  strong  bodied 
and  strong  minded,  the  maid  and 
companion  of  Grace  Garden,  herself 
loving  Henry  Little,  to  whom  Miss 
Garden  is  engaged,  yet  risking  her 
own  life  in  a  terrible  emergency  to 
save  him  for  her  mistress. 

Denham,  Ruth,  titular  heroine  of 
the  Queen  of  Sheba  by  T.  B.  Aldrich, 
receives  that  sobriquet  because  in  the 
earlier  chapters,  when  suffering  from 
temporary  aberration  of  mind,  she 
fancies  herself  the  Biblical  character. 
A  contributor  to  The  Atlantic  Monthly 
October,  1895,  calls  attention  to  a 
similar  delusion  cherished  a  century 
previous  by  a  lunatic  in  Hallowell, 
Maine.  According  to  the  annals  of 
that  town  she  used  to  wander  about 
the  country  "in  a  happy  mood  " 
with  "  an  air  of  command."  One 
day  in  1764  this  Queen  of  Sheba 
made  her  way  in  court  to  the  judge's 
bench — no  one  daring  to  oppose  her — 
and  calmly  took  her  seat  near  the 
presiding  judge.  Her  removal  by  a 
sheriflf  was  not  easily  effected,  but 
with  no  sacrifice  of  dignity  on  her 
part. 

Denise,  titular  heroine  of  a  problem 
play  (1886)  by  Alexander  Dumas,  fils. 
She  is  the  daughter  of  excellent 
parents,  the  Brissots,  who  are  be- 
friended by  the  Comte  Andr6  de 
Bardannes,  and  she  herself  is  com- 
panion to  Andre's  sister  Marthe. 
Andr^  loves  her — a  fact  which  he 
confides  to  Mme.  de  Thauzette,  a 


woman  of  the  world,  formerly  his 
mistress — and  he  would  propose  for 
Denise  but  that  he  has  reason  to  sus- 
pect that  she  is  not  what  she  seems. 
In  truth,  she  has  been  the  mistress 
of  Mme.  de  Thauzette's  unworthy 
son  Femand;  a  child,  since  dead,  was 
bom  of  the  liaison,  and  the  problem 
is  whether  Andr6  should  or  should 
not  marry  a  woman  with  a  past  of 
this  sort. 

Dennis,  Father,  in  The  Mutiny 
of  the  Mavericks  and  other  short 
stories  by  Rudyard  Kipling,  the 
popular  Roman  Catholic  chaplain 
of  the  Mavericks,  an  Irish  regi- 
ment stationed  in  India.  He  could 
blare  like  a  bull  on  occasion,  but 
had  been  known  to  tuck  up  his  cas- 
sock and  take  part  in  a  rush — usually 
finding  that  some  saint  had  fur- 
nished him  with  a  revolver  for  the 
emergency. 

Deronda,  Daniel,  titular  hero  of 
a  novel  by  George  Eliot,  evidently 
her  ideal  of  youthful  manhood. 
*'  You  could  not  have  seen  his  face 
thoroughly  meeting  yours,"  she  says, 
"  without  believing  that  human  crea- 
tures have  done  nobly  in  times  past 
and  might  do  more  nobly  in  time  to 
come."  He  has  satisfied  a  few  male 
critics  (George  William  Curtis  and 
Edward  Dowden,  for  example,  hailed 
him  with  enthusiasm),  but  repelled 
most  men  and  practically  all  women. 
Sir  Leslie  Stephen  calls  him  "  not 
merely  a  feminine  but,  one  is  inclined 
to  say,  a  school-girl's  hero.  He  is  so 
sensitive  and  scrupulously  delicate 
that  he  will  not  soil  his  hands  by 
joining  in  the  rough  play  of  ordinary 
political  and  social  reformers." 
Young  ladies  in  real  life  (probably 
because  they  resent  this  essential 
femininity)  have  never  cared  for  him, 
but  in  the  novel  they  fall  at  his  feet. 
To  Gwendolen  this  seraphic  person 
becomes  an  "  outer  conscience."  She 
begins  "  a  new  existence,"  but  it 
seems  "  inseparable  from  Deronda," 
and  she  longs  that  his  presence  may 
be  permanent.  Happily  she  does  not 
dare  to  love  him,  and  hopes  only  to  be 
bound  to  him  by  a  "  spiritual  tie." 
That  is  just  as  well,  because  he  is  in 


Desborough 


119 


Despair 


love  with  Myra,  a  young  Jewess, 
whom  he  has  rescued  from  suicide  in 
the  Thames.  Through  her  family  he 
makes  the  discovery  that  he  himself 
is  a  Jew  by  birth,  and  so  solves  many 
mysteries. 

George  Eliot,  In  later  years,  came  to 
know  several  representatives  in  the  younger 
generation  of  the  class  to  which  Deronda 
belonged.     She  speaks,   for  example,  with 

Seat  warmth  of  Henry  Sidgwick.  His 
ends,  she  remarks,  by  their  own  account, 
always  "expected  him  to  act  according  to 
a  higher  standard"  than  they  would  attri- 
bute to  any  one  else  or  adopt  for  themselves. 
She  sent  Deronda  to  Cambridge  soon  after 
she  had  written  this,  and  took  great  care  to 
give  an  accurate  account  of  the  incidents  of 
Canbridge  life.  I  have  always  fancied — 
though  without  any  evidence — that  some 
touches  in  Deronda  were  drawn  from  one 
of  her  friends,  Edmund  Gurney,  a  man  of 
remarkable  charm  of  character,  and  as 
good-looking  as  Deronda.  In  the  Cam- 
bridge atmospliere  of  Deronda's  days  there 
was,  I  think,  a  certain  element  of  rough 
common-sense  which  might  have  knocked 
some  of  her  hero's  nonsense  out  of  him. 
But),  in  any  case,  one  is  sensible  that  George 
Eliot,  if  she  is  thinking  of  real  life  at  all, 
has  come  to  see  through  a  romantic  haze 
which  deprives  the  portrait  of  reality. — 
Sir  Leslie  Stephen:    George  Eliot,  p.  191. 

Desborough,  Colonel,  in  Scott's 
novel,  Woodstock.  One  of  the  Com- 
missioners sent  by  Parliament  to  dis- 
pose of  Woodstock  Palace  and  Park 
as  national  property. 

Desborough,  Lucy,  in  George 
Meredith's  novel,  The  Ordeal  of 
Richard  Feverel,  a  maiden  wooed  and 
secretly  married  by  Richard.  Sir 
Austin,  the  father,  learning  of  the 
marriage,  keeps  the  couple  apart  in 
accordance  with  his  famous  "  sys- 
tem "  with  the  ustial  disastrous 
results. 

Deschapelles,  Pauline,  heroine  of 
The  Lady  of  Lyons,  a  drama  by 
Bulwer-Lytton.  See  Melnotte, 
Claude. 

Desdemona,  heroine  of  Shake- 
speare 's  tragedy  Othello  ( 1 6 1 1 ) .  She 
is  the  daughter  of  Brabantio,  a  Vene- 
tian senator,  whom  she  alienates  by 
her  marriage  with  the  Moorish  gen- 
eral of  the  Venetian  forces,  Othello 
(q.v.).  The  story  is  derived  from 
Giovanni  Giraldi  Cinthio's  Heca- 
tommithi,  III,  vii.  Desdemona  is  the 
only  name   mentioned  in   Cinthio's 


story.  He  writes  of  the  Moor,  the 
Lieutenant,  the  Ancient  or  Ensign, 
and  his  wife,  "  a  handsome  and  dis- 
creet woman,"  without  assigning 
them  any  names  whatever. 

It  is  so  difficult  for  even  the  very  greatest 
poets  to  give  any  vivid  force  of  living  inter- 
est to  a  figure  of  passive  endurance  that 
perhaps  the  only  instance  of  perfect  triumph 
over  this  difficulty  is  to  be  found  in  the 
character  of  Desdemona.  Shakespeare 
alone  could  have  made  her  as  interesting  as 
Imogen  or  Cordelia;  though  these  have  so 
much  to  do  and  dare,  and  she  after  her  first 
appearance  has  simply  to  suffer. — Swin- 
burne:   The  Age  of  Shakespeare, 

Desgenais,  in  Alfred  de  Musset's 
Confessions  of  a  Child  of  the  Age,  a 
gentlemanly  rou6  who  preaches  a 
cynical  morality,  an  enlightened 
selfishness,  a  sort  of  Franklin-like 
respect  for  honesty  as  the  best  policy. 
His  name  and  some  of  his  character- 
istics were  borrowed  by  Theodore 
Burri^re  in  Les  Filles  de  Marbre 
(1853),  known  in  this  country  as 
The  Marble  Heart  and  in  The  Paris- 
ians of  the  Decadence.  He  reappears 
under  other  names  in  other  plays  by 
Barriere  and  has  been  copied  and 
imitated  by  other  dramatists  and 
novelists.     See  Camors,  M.  de. 

Barriere  has  broadened  and  coars- 
ened the  outlines  of  the  original  so 
that  his  Desgenais  has  come  to  be 
accepted  as  a  type  of  the  class  whereof 
Musset's  Desgenais  is  merely  an 
individual.  A  modem  Diogenes  who 
has  realized  by  practice  what  is  so 
hard  to  learn  by  precept,  the  hollo w- 
ness  and  vanity  of  vice,  his  cynicism 
is  sheer  contempt  for  the  foUy  of  a 
world  which  will  continue  to  be 
wicked  against  its  own  interests.  He 
knows  that  his  own  experiences  can- 
not be  utilized  for  the  benefit  of 
others,  that  wisdom  can  be  learned 
only  at  the  cost  of  singed  and  muti- 
lated wings,  and  the  sarcasms  which 
he  pours  into  heedless  ears  acquire 
increased  bitterness  from  his  knowl- 
edge of  their  uselessness. 

Despair,  Giant,  in  Bunyan's  Pil- 
grim's Progress  (1678),  a  redoubtable 
monster  who  lived  with  his  wife 
Diffidence  in  Doubting  Castle — 
obviously  an  allegory  of  the  doubt, 
distrust  and  despair  that  waylay  the 


Deuceace 


120 


Dick 


pilgrim  on  his  heavenward  path.  The 
giant,  finding  Christian  and  Hopeful 
asleep  on  his  grounds,  takes  them 
captive  and  locks  them  up  in  a 
dungeon.  Here  they  languish  from 
Wednesday  to  Saturday  "  without 
one  bit  of  bread  or  drop  of  drink  or 
ray  of  light."  Further,  acting  on  the 
advice  of  Diffidence,  the  giant  beats 
them  soundly  with  a  crab-tree  cudgel. 
On  Saturday  night  Christian  remem- 
bers that  he  has  in  his  bosom  a  key 
called  "  Promise,"  wherewith  he 
opens  the  door  of  the  prison  house 
and  escapes  with  his  companion. 

Deuceace,  Hon.  Algernon  Percy,  a 
black-leg  of  good  family,  fifth  and 
youngest  son  of  the  Earl  of  Crabs, 
whose  story  is  told  by  Thackeray  in 
The  Amours  of  Mr.  Deuceace,  and  who 
flits  through  the  pages  of  other  novels 
and  stories,  i.e.,  The  Shabby  Genteel 
Story,  Vanity  Fair,  Pendennis  and 
The  Ravenswing.  In  the  Amours  Mr. 
Deuceace  conspires  with  Mr.  Blewett 
to  fleece  rich  young  Mr.  Dawkins, 
and  after  relieving  the  latter  of  £4,700 
refuses  to  divide  the  swag  either  with 
his  accomplice  or  with  his  own  father. 
Hence  the  Earl  allows  him  to  fall 
into  a  misconception  which  leads 
Algernon  to  propose  to  the  heiress 
Matilda  Griffin,  who  forfeits  her 
wealth  when  she  marries  without  her 
step-mother's  consent.  The  char- 
acter has  its  grim  original  in  Thack- 
eray's own  experience.  Sir  Theodore 
Martin  tells  how  at  Spa,  the  novelist 
once  pointed  out  to  him  a  seedy- 
looking  gambler.  "  That  was  the 
original  of  my  Deuceace,"  he  ex- 
plained, and  then  went  on  to  tell  how 
this  man  and  a  companion,  knowing 
that  Thackeray  would  have  money 
when  he  came  of  age,  had  once 
fleeced  him  out  of  £1,500  at  ^cart^. 
"  I  have  not  seen  him,"  he  added, 
"  since  the  day  he  drove  me  down  in 
his  cabriolet  to  my  broker's  in  the 
City,  where  I  sold  out  my  patrimony 
and  handed  it  over  to  him. 

Deukalion,  Prince,  hero  of  a  lyrical 
drama  of  that  name  by  Bayard 
Taylor  (1878).  Deukalion  is  the 
Greek  Noah  who  is  here  made  the 
typical  man,  as  Pyrrha  is  the  typical 


woman.  They  wander  over  earth 
from  the  primitive  ages,  sharing  the 
advance  from  barbarism  to  classical 
paganism;  ^  experiencing  successively 
the  Catholic  and  Protestant  forms  of 
Christianity;  always  awaiting  the 
consummation  of  their  nuptials,  and 
that  final  perfection  which  shall  come 
only  with  the  freest  and  purest  re- 
ligion, the  highest  culture, — the  serene 
faith  and  absolute  knowledge  to 
which  Science  directs  them,  reveal- 
ing a  power  which  governs  all,  and 
whispering  a  pledge  of  spiritual 
immortality. 

Diaforus,  Thomas  (father  and  son 
of  the  same  name),  two  characters  in 
Moliere's  comedy,  Le  Malade  Imagin- 
aire  (1673),  introduced  to  burlesque 
the  medical  science  of  the  period. 
They  are  fanatically  wedded  to 
yEsculapian  antiquity,  dealing  in 
empty  words  and  in  Greek  and  Latin 
formulas. 

In  all  Moliere's  comedies  there  are  no 
two  figures  of  a  more  amusing  veracity  and 
of  a  more  irresistible  humor  than  the  Dia- 
forus pair;  the  father  inflated  with  sonorous 
solemnity  and  the  son  stuffed  with  barren 
learning. — B  rander  _  Matthews  :    Molihre. 

Diarmid,  John,  in  Mrs.  Oliphant's 
novel,  The  Minister's  Wife  (1869),  a 
Scotch  enthusiast  who,  having  lived 
"  a  wicked,  sensual,  evil  life,"  is 
converted  at  the  revival  in  the  parish 
of  ^  Loch  Diarmid  and  rushes  into 
religion  "as  he  had  rushed  into  dis- 
sipation, from  the  same  passionate 
thirst  for  excitement."  See  Mac- 
Farlane,  Ailie. 

Diavolo,  Fra  (It.  Brother  Devil), 
a  nickname  given  to  Michele  Pezza 
( 1 760-1 806),  a  native  of  Calabria,  a 
robber  ad  a  Bourbon  partisan  leader 
who  was  hanged  at  Naples,  but  whose 
fame  is  kept  green  by  popular  songs 
and  traditions  and  especially  by  the 
fact  that  he  is  the  hero  of  Scribe  and 
Auber's  opera,  Fra  Diavolo,  which 
was  produced  at  Paris  in  1830  but 
had  little  historical  connection  with 
the  original. 

Dick,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield,  the  name  by  which 
Richard  Babley  elects  to  be  called — a 
slightly    crazed    but    harmless    old 


Diddler 


121 


Dixie 


gentleman,  florid  and  greyheaded, 
who  resides  with  Miss  Betsy  Trot- 
wood.  His  daily  task  is  the  writing 
of  his  own  "  Memorial,"  but  he  is 
obsessed  by  the  idea  of  King  Charies's 
head,  which  is  continually  obtruding 
itself  into  the  narrative,  "  and  then  it 
was  thrown  aside  and  another  one 
begun." 

Diddler,  Jeremy,  in  Kenney's 
farce,  Raising  the  Wind,  an  ingenious 
swindler,  ever  needy,  ever  seedy,  and 
ever  contriving  by  some  shift  or  other, 
by  jest  or  song  or  stratagem,  to 
borrow  money  or  obtain  credit  that 
will  tide  him  over  until  to-morrow. 

Diggory,  in  Goldsmith's  comedy 
She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  an  extempor- 
ized butler  to  the  Hardcastles,  "  taken 
from  the  bam  to  make  a  show  at  the 
side-table."  He  is  awkward  and 
garrulous,  but  effusively  anxious  to 
please. 

Do  we  not  owe  an  eternal  debt  of  grati- 
tude to  honest  Diggory  for  telling  us  about 
Old  Grouse  in  the  gun  room — that  immortal 
joke  at  which  thousands  and  thousands  of 
people  have  roared  witty  laughter,  though 
they  never  any  one  of  them  could  tell  what 
the  story  was  about? — William  Black: 
Goldsmith. 

Dimmesdale,  Arthur,  in  Haw- 
thorne's romance.  The  Scarlet  Letter, 
the  guilty  partner  of  Hester  Prynne  in 
the  adultery  that  literally  lays  the 
letter  A  upon  her  breast  and  figura- 
tively sears  it  into  the  heart  of  Dim- 
mesdale. Finally,  unable  to  bear  any 
longer  the  tortures  of  concealment  he 
publicly  proclaims  his  crime  and  dies. 
See  Prynne,  Hester,  and  Chilling- 
worth. 

The  Puritan  clergyman,  reverenced  as  a 
saint  by  all  his  flock,  conscious  of  a  sin 
which,  once  revealed,  will  crush  him  to  the 
earth,  watched  with  a  malignant  purpose 
by  the  husband  whom  he  has  injured, 
unable  to  sum  up  the  moral  courage  to  tear 
off  the  veil  and  make  the  only  atonement 
in  his  power,  is  undoubtedly  a  striking  figure, 
powerfully  conceived  and  most  delicately 
described. — Leslie  Stephen. 

Dinah,  Aunt,  in  Sterne's  novel, 
Tristram  Shandy,  aunt  to  Mr.  Walter 
Shandy;  also  a  character  in  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin. 

Dinmont,  Dandie  (i.e.,  Andrew),  in 
Scott's  novel,  Guy  Mannering,  a 
shrewd,    humorous,    eccentric    and 


kindly  store-farmer  at  Chariie's  Hope, 
"cunning  like  the  patriarchs  of  old 
in  that  which  belongeth  to  flocks  and 
herds." 

Dandie  Dinmont  is  beyond  all  question, 
we  think,  the  best  rustic  portrait  that  has 
ever  yet  been  exhibited  to  the  public — the 
most  honorable  to  rustics,  and  the  most 
creditable  to  the  heart  as  well  as  the  genius 
of  the  artist — the  truest  to  nature,  the  most 
interesting  and  the  most  complete  in  all  its 
lineaments. — Francis  Jeffrey:    Essays. 

In  his  lifetime  it  does  not  appear  to  have 
been  suggested  that  Elliot  was  Dandie 's 
original.  It  was  otherwise  with  James 
Davidson  of  Hyndlee,  who  carried  the  name 
of  Dandie  with  him  to  the  grave.  Yet  Scott 
and  Davidson  never  met  until  more  than  a 
year  after  the  novel  had  established  the 
man's  celebrity  all  over  the  border.  "  I  have 
been  at  the  Spring  Circuit"  wrote  Scott  to 
Terry,"  and  there  I  was  introduced  to  a 
man  whom  I  never  saw  in  my  life  before — 
the  genuine  Dandie  Dinmont.  Dandie  is 
himself  modest,  and  says  'he  believes  it's 
only  the  dougs  that  is  in  the  bulk  and  no 
himsel*.  In  truth  I  knew  nothing  of  the 
man  except  his  odd  humor  of  having  only 
two  names  for  twenty  dogs."  Shortreed — 
one  of  Davidson's  intimates — would  no 
doubt  tell  Scott  about  the  Hyndlee  terriers. 
— W.  S.  Crockett:  The  Scott  Originals, 
p.  60. 

Diomedes,  in  Shakespeare's  Troilus 
and  Cressida,  a  Greek  general  for 
whose  love  Cressida  deserts  Troilus. 
The  rivals  fight  in  v,  6 . 

Diver,  Colonel,  in  Dickens's  Martin 
Chuzzlewit  (Chap,  xv),  the  editor  of 
the  New   York  Rowdy  Journal. 

Dixie  or  Dixie's  land,  a  name  now 
popularly  applied  to  an  imaginary 
Utopia  or  negro  lubberland  vaguely 
located  somewhere  in  the  southern 
portion  of  the  United  States.  Thus 
the  famous  song,  Dixie,  has  the  line: 
Oh  'way  down  south  In  Dixie. 

The  song  was  written  (1859)  by 
D.  D.  Emmett  for  Bryant's  Negro 
Minstrels  in  Mechanic's  Hall,  New 
York,  was  insensibly  appropriated  by 
the  South,  and  became  one  of  the 
favorite  Confederate  battle  songs 
during  the  war.  Yet,  strangely 
enough,  the  term  Dixie,  which  ante- 
dated the  song  by  at  least  half  a 
century,  is  said  to  have  been  origin- 
ally applied  to  Manhattan  Island. 
Here  in  ancient  days  one  Dixie  or 
Dixy  owned  a  large  number  of  slaves. 
The    growth    of    the    emancipation 


Djabel 


122 


Dodge 


sentiment  constrained  him  to  transfer 
his  slaves  to  safer  quarters  in  the 
south,  but  they  and  their  descendants 
looked  back  upon  their  original  home 
with  ever-increasing  regret  as  the 
illusions  of  memory  settled  down 
upon  it,  until  Dixie's  land  or  Dixie 
became  synonymous  with  an  ideal 
locality  combining  ease  and  comfort 
with  every  material  basis  of  happiness. 

Djabely  in  Robert  Browning's 
tragedy,  The  Return  of  the  Druses,  a 
man  of  many  virtues  and  great  force 
of  character.  Out  of  patriotic  love 
for  his  people,  the  Druses,  a  semi- 
Mahommedan  sect  from  Syria  who 
have  taken  refuge  under  the  knights 
of  Rhodes  but  found  their  trust 
abused,  he  deliberately  pretends  to 
be  the  incarnate  God  Hakeem,  and 
seeks  to  lead  them  out  of  bondage. 
When  the  imposture  is  revealed  he 
stabs  himself. 

Dobbin,  William,  in  Thackeray's 
Vanity  Fair^  the  awkward  and 
adoring  fag  of  George  Osborne  at 
Dr.  Swishtail's  famous  school ;  his  dog- 
gedly patient,lifetimefriend,and,  after 
his  death  the  equally  patient  friend 
and  suitor  of  George's  widow  Amelia, 
who  discovers  his  worth  after  a  dozen 
years  of  selfless  devotion  on  his  part. 

Doboobie,  Dr.  Demetrius,  in 
Scott's  historical  romance,  Kenil- 
worth,  the  bold,  adventurous  practi- 
tioner in  physic  from  whom  Wayland 
Smith  obtained  his  knowledge  of  the 
healing  art. 

Dodd,  David,  in  Charles  Reade's 
novel.  Love  Me  Little^  Love  Me  Long 
(1859),  the  mate,  later  the  captain,  of 
an  East  Indiaman,  a  model  of  all 
manly  qualities  of  body  and  mind 
but  whose  clumsiness  and  awkward- 
ness on  shore  make  him  frequently 
ridiculous.  He  wins  the  vacillating 
Lucy  Fountain  by  rescuing  her  from 
imminent  peril  when  out  sailing  with 
a  rival,  thus  convincing  her  of  the 
strength,  skill  and^  courage  he  is 
capable  of  when  in  his  proper  element 
and  away  from  the  drawing  rooms. 

Dodd  reappears  in  Hard  Cash 
(1864),  as  the  father  of  the  heroine 
Julia.  He  is  bringing  home  to  her 
and  to  her  mother  the  hard  cash  of 


the  title,  £14,000  in  bills  and  notes, 
which  survives  awful  sea  risks  to  be 
deposited  triimiphantly  in  a  Barking- 
ton  Bank.  He  has  hardly  got  out 
on  the  street  again  when  he  hears  that 
the  bank  is  on  the  brink  of  failure. 
He  rushes  back,  has  a  struggle  with  a 
fraudulent  banker  who  refuses  to 
return  the  deposit  and  loses  his  reason 
by  apoplexy.  Immured  in  a  private 
madhouse  he  escapes  when  it  bums 
down,  gets  on  board  a  frigate  as 
"  Silly  Billy  Thompson  "  (for  he  has 
forgotten  his  own  name  and  history), 
jumps  overboard  to  rescue  a  young- 
ster; narrowly  misses  being  buried 
alive  in  a  resultant  fit  of  catalepsy; 
recovers  his  reason  as  a  result  of  the 
shock;  regains  his  £14,000  and  is 
restored  to  wife  and  daughter. 

Dodd,  Julia,  daughter  of  David 
and  heroine  of  Hard  Cash,  by 
Charles  Reade,  a  mixture  of  vehem- 
ence and  sweetness,  a  young  creature 
brimmed  with  the  blissfulness  of 
being. 

Dodds,  The,  an  Anglo-Irish  family 
in  Charles  J.  Lever's  novel.  The  Dodd 
Family  Abroad,  written  to  satirize 
the  ignorance,  prejudice  and  self- 
assertiveness  of  British  travellers  on 
the 'Continent.  Mr.  Dodd  is  a  fairly 
sensible  man  temporarily  thrown  off 
his  jbalance  by  the  complete  change 
of  surroundings.  Mrs.  Dodd  is  a 
silly  woman  who  dearly  loves  a  lord, 
which  weakness  she  shares  with  her 
son  James,  a  dissipated  dandy,  and 
her  daughter  Mary  Anne.  It  is  a 
relief  to  turn  to  the  other  daughter, 
Catherine,  agreeable,  sensible,  refined, 
tender — Lever's  favorite  female  char- 
acter, said  to  have  been  drawn  from 
his  wife. 

Dodge,  Esq.,  Steadfast,  in  Cooper's 
novels.  Homeward  Bound  and  Home 
as  Found,  an  American  journalist — a 
thoroughpaced  demagogue  at  home 
and  a  servile  tuft  hunter  abroad — 
who  is  an  abstract  of  all  the  van- 
ity, vulgarity  and  mean-spiritedness 
which  <5)Oper  despised  in  the  Ameri- 
can parvenu.  The  correspondence 
that  Dodge  has  sent  to  the  home 
newspapers  during  his  European  tour, 
and  which  he  reads  to  his  fellow- 


Dodo 


123 


Doister 


passengers  on  the  homeward  voyage, 
is  an  evident  fling  at  N.  P.  Willis  and 
his  Pencillings  by  the  Way. 

Dodo,  nickname  of  the  heroine  of 
Edward  F.  Benson's  novel,  Dodo,  a 
Detail  of  To-day  (1893),  which  was 
contemporaneously  recognized  as  a 
thinly  veiled  sketch  of  Miss  Emma 
Alice  Tennant  (familiarly  known  as 
Margot),  who  in  1895  married  Eng- 
land's future  Prime  Minister,  Mr. 
Asquith.  A  character  in  the  story 
says  of  her:  "  She  makes  me  feel  as 
if  I  were  sitting  under  a  flaming  gas- 
burner  which  was  beating  on  what 
nature  designed  to  be  my  brain- 
cover."  And  Dodo  says:  "  The  first 
time  a  man  sees  me  he  usually  thinks 
I'm  charming  and  sympathetic  and 
lively.  But  it  turns  out  I've  got  a 
bad  temper,  that  I  smoke  and  swear 
and  only  amuse  myself." 

A  cruel  and  cynical  commentary 
upon  this  brilliant  woman's  life  was 
uttered  by  William  Watson  in  a  poem, 
The  Vampire,  beginning, 

She  is  not  old,  she  is  not  young, 
The  woman  with  the  serpent  tongue. 

Dods,  Meg,  in  Scott's  novel,  St. 
Ronan's  Well,  the  landlady  and  des- 
potic ruler  of  the  Cleikimi  Inn  at  St. 
Ronan's  Old  Town.  Her  excellent 
cuisine  and  her  well-chosen  wines 
attracted  customers  whom  she  either 
patronized  or  sent  about  their  busi- 
ness ^  if  they  would  not  accept  her 
domination.  She  said  of  herself  that 
her  bark  was  worse  than  her  bite; 
"  but  what  teeth,"  asks  her  creator, 
"  could  have  matched  a  tongue, 
which,  when  in  full  career,  is  vouched 
to  have  been  heard  from  the  Kirk  to 
the  Castle  of  St.  Ronan's."  With  the 
increased  prosperity  of  the  rival  inn 
her  humor  became  more  capricious, 
but  to  her  old  and  valued  friends  she 
could  still  make  her  inn  **  the  neatest 
and  most  comfortable,  old-fashioned 
house  in  Scotland." 

Dodson  and  Fogg,  in  The  Pickwick 
Papers  (1836),  by  Charles  Dickens, 
a  firm  of  legal  sharks  who  engage  in 
speculation  to  prosecute  Mrs.  Bar- 
dell's  breach  of  promise  suit  against 
Mr.  Pickwick. 


Doe,  John,  a  sham  plaintiff  in 
actions  of  ejectment  tolerated  by  a 
fiction  of  the  law  and  usually  asso- 
ciated with  a  sham  defendant  in 
Richard  Roe. 

Doeg,  in  the  Old  Testament  (I 
Samuel  xxi,  7),  was  the  chief  of  Saul's 
herdsmen  "  having  charge  of  the 
mules."  Under  this  name,  Dryden, 
in  the  second  part  of  Absalom  and 
Achitophel,  satirized  Elkanah  Settle, 
a  poetaster  who  for  a  period  was  held 
to  be  no  contemptible  rival  by  Dry- 
den's  political  enemies. 

Dogberry,  in  Shakespeare's  com- 
edy. Much  Ado  about  Nothing  (Act 
iv,  Sc.  2),  a  city  official  full  of  loqua- 
cious vanity  and  fond  of  large  words 
whose  sound  he  appreciates  without 
fully  grasping  their  meaning,  a  mascu- 
line anticipation,  in  short,  of  Sheri- 
dan's Mrs.  Malaprop.  ^  "  Write  me 
down  an  ass!  "  he  cries  in  rueful 
reprisal  at  an  imcompUmentary  epi- 
thet from  Conrade. 

Even  at  stupidity  and  pretenston  thii 
Shakespeare  does  not  laugh  other  than 
genially.  Dogberry  and  Verges  tickle  our 
very  hearts;  and  we  dismiss  them  covered 
with  explosions  of  laughter;  but  we  like  the 
poor  fellows  only  the  better  for  our  laughing: 
and  hope  they  will  get  on  well  there  and 
continue  Presidents  of  the  City  Watch. 
Such  laughter,  like  sunshine  on  the  deep 
sea,  is  very  beautiful  to  me. — Carlvle: 
The  Hero  as  Poet,  in  Heroes  and  Hero- 
worship. 

The  character  of  Dogberry,  says  Aubrey, 
was  studied  from  a  live  original.  "The 
humor  of  the  constable  in  A  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream"  (Aubrey  was  no  eure  guide 
among  the  plays)  "he  happened  to  take  at 
Grendon  in  Bucks,  which  is  the  road  from 
London  to  Stratford,  and  there  was  living 
that  constable  about  1642,  when  I  first 
came  to  Oxon."  However  this  may  be, 
that  constable  was  living  in  many  another 

elace  and  was  adorned,  not  created,  by 
hakespeare's  imagination.  —  Walter 
Raleigh:  Shakespeare  in  English  Men  of 
Letters  series,  p.  48. 

Doister,  Ralph  Roister,  hero  and 
title  of  the  first  regular  comedy  in 
English  (circa  1550),  partly  founded 
on  the  Eunuchus  of  Terence.  The 
only  copy  known  of,  and  that  lacking 
a  title  page,  was  discovered  in  18 18. 
The  discovery  of  the  author's  name, 
Nicholas  Udall,  was  made  by  John 
Payne  Collier  in  1825.     Its  leading 


DoU^ 


124 


Dombey 


motive  is  the  courtship  of  Dame 
Custance  by  the  hero,  who  falls  a 
victim  to  the  wiles  of  Matthew 
Merigreek  and,  after  being  sadly- 
discomfited,  at  last  joins  in  with  the 
himioiir  of  the  others,  and  consents 
to  the  union  of  the  dame  with  Gawin 
Goodlucke,  a  merchant,  to  whom  she 
is  already  betrothed.  Rafe  Roister 
is  a  character  in  Fulv/eVs  Like  Will 
to  Like,  and  a  "  roister-doister  "  was 
used  proverbially  for  a  hare-brained 
fellow.  The  word  "  roister  "  is  evi- 
dently from  the  French  "  rustre,"  a 
ruffian,  and  recalls  the  "  rustarii,"  or 
French  freebooters,  of  the  eleventh 
century. 

Dolls,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  novel,  Our 
Mutual  Friend.    See  Wren,  Jennie. 

Doltaire,  the  moving  spirit  in  Sir 
Gilbert  Parker's  romance,  The  Seats 
of  the  Mighty.  The  scene  is  laid  in 
and  around  Quebec  during  the  war 
between  the  English  and  the  French 
which  resulted  in  the  capture  of  that 
city  (1789)  by  James  Wolfe,  and  the 
eventual  transfer  of  all  Canada  to  the 
British.  Doltaire,  a  dashing,  hand- 
some, masterful  Frenchman,  a  favor- 
ite of  Madame  de  Pompadour,  is 
sent  over  to  Quebec  by  that  left- 
handed  Queen  of  France  to  possess 
himself  of  certain  papers  in  the  hands 
of  Captain  Robert  Moray,  held  as  a 
hostage  by  the  French  in  Quebec. 
He  finds  in  Moray  a  rival  for  Alixe 
Duvamey,  with  whom  he  himself  falls 
in  love  and  receives  a  new  incentive 
in  fierce  jealousy  that  maddens  his 
imperious  mind.  Doltaire  and  Alixe 
are  mere  fictions.  Robert  Moray 
(q.v.)  is  drawn  from  a  historical 
character. 

Dombey,  Edith,  second  wife  of  Mr. 
Paul  Dombey  (q.v.),  daughter  of  Mrs. 
Skewton  and  widow  of  Colonel 
Granger.  Handsome,  haughty,  self- 
willed,  marrying  only  for  money,  she 
rebels  against  the  cold  arrogance  of 
her  husband  and  goes  through  the 
form  of  an  elopement  with  John 
Carker,  content  to  wear  the  appear- 
ance of  an  adulteress  if  by  so  doing 
she  can  avenge  herself  upon  her 
husband  and  simultaneously  upon 
Carker,  who  for  some  time  has  made 


her  an  object  of  vulgar  and  nauseating 
pursuit. 

Dombey,  Florence,  daughter  of 
Paul  Dombey,  a  loving  and  lovable 
girl  whom  her  father  cannot  forgive 
because  she  was  not  bom  a  boy, 
whom  he  drives  out  of  his  house  after 
her  stepmother's  elopement,  holding 
her  to  be  a  fellow  conspirator  against 
him,  and  who  pours  coals  of  fire  upon 
his  head  in  his  broken  age. 

Dombey,  Paul,  in  Dickens's  Dom- 
bey and  Son,  Mr.  Dombey's  son  and 
heir,  a  delicate  and  pretty  child, 
thoughtful  beyond  his  years,  whose 
early  death  powerfully  affected  con- 
temporary readers,  as  may  be  seen 
from  the  extract. 

Oh  my  dear,  dear  Dickens!  Wliat  a  No. 
S  you  have  now  given  us!  I  have  so  cried 
and  sobbed  over  it  last  night,  and  again  this 
morning,  and  felt  my  heart  purified  by 
those  tears,  and  blessed  and  loved  you  for 
making  me  shed  them:  and  I  never  can  bless 
and  love  you  enough.  Since  the  divine 
Nelly  was  found  dead  on  her  humble  couch, 
beneath  the  snow  and  the  ivy,  there  has 
been  nothing  like  the  actual  dying  of  that 
sweet  Paul,  in  the  summer  sunshine  of  that 
lofty  room.  .  .  .  Every  trait  so  true 
and  so  touching — and  yet  lightened  by  the 
fearless  innocence  which  goes  playfully  to 
the  brink  of  the  grave,  and  that  pure  affec- 
tion which  bears  the  unstained  spirit,  on  its 
soft  and  lambent  flash,  at  once  to  its  source 
in  eternity. — Francis,  Lord  Jeffrey, 
Letter  to  Charles  Dickens,  January  31. 

Paul  Dombey  was  inspired  by  the  pa- 
thetic personality  of  a  favorite  nephew, 
Henry  Burnett,  a  cripple  who  died  in  his 
tenth  year.  Notwithstanding  his  affliction 
he  was  one  of  the  happiest  and  brightest 
of  children  with  an  ever-active  mind  and  a 
passion  for  Bible  reading. — F.  G.  Kitton, 
The  Novels  of  Charles  Dickens. 

Dombey,  Mr.  Paul,  in  Dickens's 
novel,  Dombey  and  Son,  a  wealthy 
London  merchant,  starched,  pom- 
pous, self-satisfied.  Wrapped  up  in 
his  mercantile  ambitions,  he  cares 
only  for  little  Paul,  who  enables  him 
to  retain  the  words  "  and  Son  "  in  the 
firm  name.  The  loss  of  the  mother 
affected  him  little;  he  married  again 
and  was  as  coldly  cruel  to  his  second 
wife  as  he  had  been  to  his  first.  She 
elopes  and  he  keenly  feels  the  disgrace 
but  is  otherwise  unmoved.  His  son's 
death  breaks  his  heart;  he  loses  inter- 
est in  his  business,  and  the  great 
house  which  he  ha4  inherited  goes 


Dominic 


125 


Dora 


down  in  bankruptcy.  In  his  later 
days  he  repents  and  is  reconciled  to 
his  daughter  Florence. 

Dominic,  Father  or  Friar,  titular 
hero  of  Dryden's  comedy,  The 
Spanish  Friar  (1681).  Macaulay 
calls  him  the  best  comic  character  ot 
Dryden,  and  assigns  his  origin  to  the 
hypocritical  confessor  in  Machiavelli's 
comedy,  the  Mandragola,  He  is  thus 
described  in  Act  ii,  Sc.  3:  "  He  is  a 
huge,  fat,  religious  gentleman  .  .  . 
big  enough  to  be  a  pope.  His  gills  are 
as  rosy  as  a  turkey-cock's.  His  big 
belly  walks  in  state  before  him,  like  a 
harbinger,  and  his  gouty  legs  come 
limping  after  it.  Never  was  such  a 
tun  of  devotion  seen." 

Donatello,  Count,  in  Hawthorne's 
romance.  The  Marble  Faun  (called 
Transformation  in  England),  is  the 
Italian  lover  of  the  American  Miriam. 
He  bears  a  singular  resemblance  to 
the  Faun  of  Praxiteles,  and  the  author 
tantalizingly  plays  with  a  doubt 
whether,  if  the  breeze  should  lift  his 
clustering  locks  a  little  higher,  his 
ears  sould  stand  revealed  as  human  or 
animal.  His  character  corresponds 
to  his  appearance.  Morally  irre- 
sponsible but  htunanly  conscious,  he 
is  an  Adam  before  the  fall,  the  trusted 
friend  and  playmate  of  nature  until 
brought  into  personal  contact  with 
sin  and  suffering.    See  Miriam. 

It  is  a  triumph  of  art  that  a  being  whose 
nature  trembles  on  the  very  verge  of  the 
grotesque  should  walk  through  Hawthorne's 

Sages  with  such  undeviating  grace.  Let 
im  show  but  the  extremest  tip  of  one  of  his 
furry  ears — or  were  they  not  furry? — and 
he  would  be  irretrievably  lost.  Mr.  Darwin 
or  Barnum  would  claim  him  as  their  own 
and  he  would  pass  from  the  world  of  poetry 
into  the  dissecting  room  or  the  showman's 
booth.  In  the  Roman  dreamland  he  is  in  little 
danger  of  such  prying  curiosity,  though  even 
there  he  can  only  be  kept  out  of  harm's  way 
by  the  admirable  skill  of  his  creator. — Les- 
lie Stephen:    Hours  in  a  Library. 

Donnithome,    Arthur,    in    George 

Eliot's  Adam  Bede,  the  seducer  of 
Hetty  Sorrel,  a  vain,  affectionate, 
frank-hearted,  susceptible  and  self- 
indulgent  young  gentleman  who  owed 
no  one  a  grudge  and  would  have  been 
delighted  to  see  everybody  happy 
around  him,  especially  if  they  recog- 
nized that  a  large  part  of  their  happi- 


ness came  from  the  handsome  young 
landlord. 

Doola,  Namgay,  hero  and  title  of 
a  short  story  in  Rudyard  Kipling's 
Life's  Handicaps,  a  red-headed,  half- 
breed  son  of  a  Hindoo  woman  and  her 
orientalised  husband,  Thimla  Dhula 
(Tim  Doolan),  who  refuses  to  pay 
taxes  and  otherwise  betrays  the  secret 
of  his  Irish  parentage.  Thereupon 
the  teller  of  the  story  advises  the 
native  king  to  raise  Namgay  Doola  to 
a  position  of  honor  in  the  army,  since 
he  came  of  a  race  that  never  could  be 
coerced  into  paying  rent  or  taxes,  but 
which  would  do  heroic  work  if  flat- 
tered and  humored. 

Dooley,  Mr.,  a  fictitious  humorist 
through  whom  Finley  Peter  Dunne, 
his  creator,  voices  in  burlesque  form 
his  protests  against  the  shams  and 
conventions  of  the  hour.  Dooley,  an 
Irishman  by  birth,  an  American  by 
adoption,  presides  over  a  saloon  in 
Archey  Road,  Chicago,  where  he 
amuses  himself  by  shooting  folly  as  it 
flies  with  shafts  dipped  in  vinegar  and 
honey.  His  favorite  interlocutor  is 
Mr.  Hennessy,  and  he  also  lends  a 
ready  ear  to  the  questions  of  Mr. 
McKenna,  his  neighbor. 

Doone,  Loma,  titular  heroine  of  a 
novel  (1871),  by  R.  D.  Blackmore, 
the  only  girl  in  a  fierce  family  of 
aristocratic  outlaws  who,  smarting 
under  wrongs  suffered  from  the  gov- 
ernment, have  retired  to  a  valley  in 
Exmoor,  whence  they  periodically 
emerge  to  plunder  the  countryside. 
As  a  mere  child  she  rescues  the  four- 
teen-year-old John  Ridd  from  capture 
by  the  band.  Seven  years  later,  now 
developed  into  the  tallest  and  stoutest 
youth  on  Exmoor,  he  seeks  Loma 
again.  He  hates  the  Doones,  who 
killed  his  father,  but  he  loves  Loma, 
whom  he  remembers  as  the  fairest, 
daintiest  child  he  had  ever  seen,  be- 
comes her  protector  against  her  own 
people,  and  eventually  wins  her  hand. 

Dora,  in  Dickens's  David  Copper- 
field.    See  Spenlow,  Dora. 

Dora,  heroine  and  title  of  a  poetical 
idyll  by  Alfred  Tennyson,  founded 
upon  a  story  in  Miss  Milford's  Our 
Village. 


Dorante 


126 


Dorrit 


Dorante,  hero  of  Pierre  Corneille's 
comedy,  The  Liar  (Fr.  Le  Menteur, 
1643),  a  young  gentleman  who  has 
been  studying  law  at  Poitiers  and 
comes  to  Paris  to  see  the  sights.  His 
guide  and  adviser  is  the  valet  Cliton, 
who  in  vain  seeks  to  stem  or  interrupt 
the  stream  of  lies  which  Dorante 
pours  out  in  his  anxiety  to  impress 
women  and  impose  upon  friends  and 
relatives. 

Dorante,  in  Moli^re's  farce,  Les 
Facheux,  a  noisy,  blustering,  swearing 
himtsman.  The  play  is  a  gallery  of 
caricatures  of  typical  titled  bores  in 
the  court  of  Louis  XIV,  and  this 
portrait  is  said  to  have  been  added  by 
royal  suggestion  as  a  hit  at  the  grand 
veneur,  the  master  of  the  hounds. 

In  the  comedy  of  Les  Facheux  which  Is 
one  of  the  finest  of  M.  Moliere's,  the  hunts- 
man who  is  introduced  is  M.  de  Soyecourt. 
It  was  the  king  who  gave  him  this  subject, 
upon  leaving,  after  the  first  representation 
of  this  piece  at  M.  Fouquet's.  His  Majesty, 
seeing  M.  de  Soyecourt  pass,  said  to 
MoliCre:  "There  is  a  great  original  that 
you  have  not  copied,"  and  all  the  hunting 
terms  are  said  to  have  been  dictated  by  the 
king  himself. — Menage:    Menagiana. 

Doraz,  in  Dryden's  tragedy,  Don 
Sebastian  (1690),  the  name  assumed 
by  Don  Alonzo  of  Alcazar,  when  he 
deserted  Sebastian,  King  of  Portugal, 
and  went  over  to  the  Emperor  of 
Barbary. 

Dorax  Is  Indeed  the  chef  d'ceuvre  of 
Dryden's  tragic  characters  and  perhaps  the 
only  one  in  which  he  has  applied  his  great 
knowledge  of  human  kind  to  actual  delinea- 
tion. It  is  highly  dramatic  because  formed 
of  those  complex  feelings  which  may  readily 
lead  either  to  virtue  or  vice,  and  which  the 
poet  can  manage  so  as  to  surprise  the  spec- 
tator without  transgressing  consistency. 
The  Zanga  of  Young,  a  part  of  great  theatri- 
cal effect,  has  been  compounded  of  this 
character  and  of  that  of  lago. — Hallam, 
Review  of  Scott's  Dryden,  Edinburgh  Review, 
vol.  13.  p.  125. 

Doricourt,  the  betrothed  lover  of 
Letitia  Hardy  in  Mrs.  Cowley's 
comedy,  The  Belle's  Stratagem. 
Though  a  fashionable  man  about 
town  and  something  of  a  rake,  he 
keeps  his  plighted  word  even  when  he 
fancies  that  he  loves  another,  and  is 
rewarded  by  finding  that  it  is  the 
same.  For  explanation  of  this  para- 
dox see  Hardy,  Letitia. 


Dorimant,  in  Sir  George  Etherege's 
comedy.  The  Man  of  Mode  or  Sir 
Fopling  Flutter  (1676).  A  man  of 
rank  and  fashion  and  an  unscrupulous 
rake,  his  wit,  shrewdness  and  strategy 
make  him  a  brilliant  foil  to  the  rather 
foolish  hero.  Evidently  intended  to  be 
a  model  fine  gentleman,  he  is  as  evi- 
dently drawn  from  John  Wilmot,  Earl 
of  Rochester,  the  tinselled  darling  of 
contemporary  London  society.  In 
later  English  literature  the  name  was 
used  to  signify  any  loose  and  unprin- 
cipled, but  witty,  modish,  and  agree- 
able young  man. 

Dorothea,  heroine  of  Goethe's  pas- 
toral in  hexameter  verse,  Hermann 
and  Dorothea  (1797)  whose  scene  is 
laid  in  Germany  at  the  period  of  the 
French  Revolution.  Hermann,  son 
of  the  leading  burgher  of  a  peaceful 
village  in  Southern  Germany,  is  sent 
to  minister  to  a  band  of  refugees  from 
the  Upper  Rhine  districts.  Struck 
with  the  beauty  and  goodness  of 
Dorothea,  one  of  the  exiles,  he  wrings 
from  his  father  a  reluctant  permission 
to  woo  her.  All  ignorant  of  her  des- 
tiny, Dorothea  comes  into  the  house- 
hold as  a  servant.  Misunderstandings 
arise,  Dorothea  takes  alarm,  and  begs 
leave  to  return  to  her  own  people. 
Tearfully  she  paints  her  forlorn  con- 
dition and  naively  confesses  that  from 
the  first  her  heart  had  gone  out  to 
Hermann,  and  she^  had  hoped  that 
some  day  she  might  be  deemed 
worthy  of  becoming  lus  bride.  Every- 
thing is  cleared  up,  reconciliation 
follows,  and  Dorothea  is  betrothed  to 
Hermann. 

Dorrit,  Amy,  heroine  of  Dickens's 
novel,  Little  Dorrit  (1856).  Born  and 
brought  up  in  the  Marshalsea  prison, 
Bermondsey,  where  her  family  were 
immured  for  years  owing  to  the  im- 
prisonment of  her  father  for  debt, 
she  has  hardly  reached  the  age  of 
fourteen  before  she  has  begun  to  do 
needlework  for  scanty  wages.  The 
prisoners  worshipped  her,  the  men  in 
Bermondsey  took  off  their  hats  when 
she  appeared  in  the  streets.  When 
the  family  are  restored  to  freedom 
and  to  comparative  wealth  she  is  the 
only  one  who  does  not  become  arro- 


Dorrit 


127 


Douglas 


gant  and  selfish  under  the  new  condi- 
tions. She  and  Arthiir  Clennan  fall 
in  love  and,  when  the  troubles  inci- 
dent to  family  opposition  are  all  over, 
she  elects  to  be  married  in  the  Mar- 
shalsea. 

Little  Dorrit  might  be  less  untruly  than 
unkindly  described  as  Little  Nell  grown  big 
or,  in  Milton's  phrase,  "writ  large."  But 
on  that  very  account  she  is  a  more  credible 
and  therefore  a  more  really  and  rationally 
pathetic  figure. — A.  C.  Swinburne,  Charles 
Dickens  Qua.  Rev.,  196,  29. 

Dorrit,  William,  in  Dickens's  Little 
Dorrit,  a  weak,  shy  man,  father  of 
Amy,  whose  term  as  a  debtor  is  so 
long  that  he  comes  to  be  known  as  the 
Father  of  the  Marshalsea.  On  be- 
coming heir  to  a  large  estate  he  is 
released. 

The  Father  of  the  Marshalsea  is  so  piti- 
ably worthy  of  pity  as  well  as  of  scorn  that 
it  would  have  seemed  impossible  to  heighten 
or  to  deepen  the  contempt  or  the  compas- 
sion of  the  reader,  but  when  he  falls  from 
adversity  to  prosperity  he  succeeds  in  soar- 
ing down  and  sinking  up  to  a  more  tragi- 
comic ignominy  of  more  aspiring  degrada- 
tion. And  his  end  is  magnificent. — Swin- 
burne:   Charles  Dickens,  p.  47. 

Dory,  John,  title  and  hero  of  an  old 
ballad,  frequently  alluded  to  by  the 
dramatists  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries.  John  O'Keefe 
adopted  the  name  for  one  of  the 
characters  in  his  comedy,  Wild  Oats, 
or  the  Strolling  Gentleman. 

Dot,  the  pet  name  of  Mrs.  Mary 
Peerybingle,  the  carrier's  wife  in  The 
Cricket  on  the  Hearth,  a  Christmas 
story  by  Dickens.  The  story  has 
been  dramatized  by  Boucicault. 

Dotheboys  Hall  {i.e.,  Hall  where 
the  boys  are  done),  the  name  of  a 
Yorkshire  school  in  Dickens's  Nicho- 
las Nickleby  (1838),  kept  by  Mr. 
Wackford  Squeers  (q.v.),  under  whom 
Nicholas  for  a  time  was  assistant. 
This  caricature  of  the  abuses  in  the 
country  boarding-school  system  was 
efficacious  in  causing  a  complete 
reform.    See  also  Smike. 

The  original  of  Dotheboys  Hall  is  still  in 
existence  at  Bowes,  some  five  miles  from 
Barnard  Castle.  The  King's  Head  Inn  at 
Barnard  Castle  is  spoken  of  in  Nicholas 
Nickleby  by  Newmann  Noggs. — Notes  and 
Queries,  April  2,  z875> 


Doubting  Castle,  in  Btmyan's  Pil- 
grim's Progress,  the  abode  of  Giant 
Despair  (q.v.). 

Douglas,  a  family  famous  not  only 
in  Scotch  history  but  in  Scotch  poetry 
and  romance.  After  Bruce,  Baliol 
and  the  SouHs  had  passed  away,  the 
Douglases,  descendantsof  Sholto  Dhu 
Glass,  "  the  dark  grey  man,"  rose  to 
unrivalled  power.  As  Scott  says  in 
his  Tales  of  a  Grandfather,  they  often 
cast  their  coronet  into  the  scale 
against  the  Crown,  and  as  Andrew 
Lang  shows  in  his  History  of  Scotland, 
too  often  their  ambition  was  fatal  to 
their  country.  ^  But,  as  King  Robert 
said  at  council  in  the  Dominican  Con- 
vent at  Perth,  the  broad  breast  of 
Douglas  had  been  Scotland's  best 
bulwark.  In  Scott's  eyes  their  patri- 
otism and  martial  renown  covered  a 
multitude  of  sins.  As  the  hero  of 
Castle  Dangerous  (183 1),  he  takes 
**  the  good  Sir  James,"  brother-in-law 
of  Bruce,  who  "  loved  better  to  hear 
the  lark  sing  than  the  mouse  squeak." 

Sir  James  was  the  first  of  the  Black 
Douglases.  It  is  he  whose  very  name 
was  such  a  terror  to  his  southron  foes 
that  EngUsh  mothers  would  frighten 
or  pacify  unruly  children  by  threaten- 
ing to  deliver  them  over  to  the  Black 
Douglas. 

Hush  ye,  hush  ye,  little  pet  ye; 
Hush  ye,  hush  ye,  do  not  fret  ye; 
The  Black  Douglas  shall  not  get  thee. 
Nursery  Song  quoted  by  Scott  in 
Tales  of  a  Grandfather,  i,  6. 

Next  in  chronological  order  comes 
Archibald  the  Grim,  in  The  Fair  Maid 
of  Perth  (1828),  an  incarnation  of  all 
the  pride  and  terror  of  the  race,  whose 
will  was  iron  and  whose  word  was  law. 

The  Red  Douglases  rose  on  the 
fall  of  the  Black,  their  representative 
in  the  Waverley  series  is  the  Regent 
Morton  (James  Douglas,  Earl  of 
Morton) ;  loose  in  his  loves,  tmscrupu- 
lous  in  his  methods,  greedy  of  the 
gold  he  scattered,  and  boundless  in 
the  ambition  which  brought  him  to 
the  block.  He  is  the  most  significant 
figure  in  the  two  romances  that  deal 
with  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots—The 
Monastery  (1820)  and  The  Abbott 
(1820) — where  he  is  drawn  as  the 


Douglas 


128 


Drawcansir 


embodiment  of  wise  and  beneficial 
statescraft  in  times  made  difficult  by 
the  strife  of  factions  and  the  unruly 
spirits  of  the  barons  with  whom  he 
had  to  deal — as  the  man  who,  had  he 
been  bom  without  the  bar  sinister, 
would  have  been  the  most  illustrious 
monarch  of  the  unhappy  Stewart  line. 

Douglas,  in  John  Home's  tragedy 
of  that  name.    See  Norval,  Young. 

Douglas,  Archibald,  Earl  of  Doug- 
las, appears  in  Shakespeare's  /  Henry 
IV.  The  ally  of  the  Percys  when 
they  rebelled  against  Heniy  IV,  he 
kills  Lord  Strafford  and  Sir  Walter 
Blunt,  mistaking  them  for  the  king, 
at  the  battle  of  Shrewsbury  (July  23, 
1403).  When  finally  he  meets  the 
king.  Prince  Hal  comes  to  his  father's 
rescue  and  Douglas  is  put  to  flight. 

Douglas,  Ellen,  heroine  of  Scott's 
narrative  poem,  The  Lady  of  the  Lake. 

It  is  no  profound  study  of  an  Ideal  woman, 
but  it  is  a  true  Highland  girl,  frankest,  most 
courageous  and  most  stainless  of  human 
creatures.  In  her  simplicity  there  is  at  once 
a  gleam  of  frolic  and  a  possibility  of  all  the 
stateliness  which  becomes  a  lady  of  the  far- 
famed  Douglas  blood — Blackwood  Maga- 
tine,  July,  1871. 

Dowlas,  Dick,  in  George  Colman 
the  Younger's  comedy.  The  Heir  at 
Law,  son  of  Daniel  Dowlas,  an  old 
Gospert  shopkeeper,  who,  on  account 
of  the  supposed  loss  of  the  son  of  Lord 
Duberly,  succeeds  to  a  peerage  and 
an  estate  of  £15,000  a  year.  See 
Pangloss,  Dr. 

Dowling,  Captain.  "  A  great  drunk- 
ard," who  figures  in  Crabbe's 
Borough. 

Drake,  Francis,  the  famous  English 
voyager  and  privateer,  is  the  hero  of 
Drake,  an  English  Epic,  by  Alfred 
Noyes. 

Francis  Drake — the  deus  ex  machina,  as 
it  were,  of  the  Armada  tragedy,  clothed  with 
terrors  not  of  this  world  by  the  panic  of  his 
enemies — is  a  theme  pre-eminently  suited 
for  epic  treatment;  while  tales  of  mutiny 
and  torture,  of  fabulous  treasure,  and  for- 
lorn hopes  crowned  with  almost  super- 
natural success,  provide  a  wealth  of  stirring 
episode  that  contrasts  effectively  with  the 
beautiful  love-idyll  of  the  hero  and  Bess 
of  Sydenham.  Nevertheless,  through  all, 
clearly  discernible  at  intervals  more  or  less 
frequent,  Is  a  sense  of  effort,  culminating 
In  a  Twelfth — and  final — Book  which  verges 
on  the  perfunctory, — London  Athenaum. 


Drapier,  M.  B.  (a  suppositious 
Irish  trader),  the  pseudonym  under 
which  Swift  wrote  his  Drapier  Letters 
(1724),  a  series  of  epistles  directed 
against  the  introduction  of  "  Wood's 
half -pence  "  into  Ireland.  Copper 
coin^  having  become  scarce  there, 
William  Wood  of  Wolverhampton 
had  received  from  the  English  govern- 
ment a  patent  to  supply  the  demand 
to  the  amount  of  £80,000  by  coining 
half -pence  and  farthings  for  fourteen 
years.  Swift  denoimced  the  patent 
because  it  had  been  obtained  surrep- 
titiously through  the  Duchess  of 
Kendal,  the  mistress  of  George  I,  to 
whom  Wood  had  pledged  a  share  in 
the  profits;  because  it  had  passed 
without  consultation  with  either  the 
Lord  Lieutenant  or  the  privy  council 
of  Ireland,  and  also  and  especially 
because  it  surrendered  to  an  obscure 
individual  the  right  of  exercising  one 
of  the  highest  privileges  of  the  Crown. 
Swift  succeeded  in  raising  a  storm  of 
indignation  in  Ireland  that  made 
King  George  quail;  Wood  was  com- 
pelled to  withdraw  his  patent,  and 
his  copper  coinage  was  totally  sup- 
pressed. 

Dravot,  Daniel,  hero  of  a  short 
story,  The  Man  Who  Would  Be  King, 
in  Rudyard  Kipling's  Phantom  Rick- 
shaw. A  shrewd  adventurer,  he 
aspires  to  be  ruler  of  Kaf  ristan.  With 
Peachey  Camehan  as  his  servant,  he 
gains  unlimited  power  over  the  native 
tribes.  They  deem  him  a  god,  give 
him  and  Camehan  each  a  gold  crown 
and  divide  the  empire  between  them. 
Finally  Dravot  demands  a  wife;  the 
girl  puts  his  godship  to  a  test  by  biting 
him;  seeing  the  blood  betrays  him  as 
a  mere  human  being,  he  is  put  to 
death  and  Camehan  is  tortured  and 
banished.  J.  M.  Barrie  pronounces 
this  the  author's  masterpiece :  '  *  Posi- 
tively, it  is  the  most  audacious  thing 
in  fiction,  and  yet  it  reads  as  true  as 
Robinson  Crusoe." 

Drawcansir,  in  The  Rehearsal,  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham's  burlesque,  is 
a  noisy  braggart  meant  especially  as  a 
caricature  of  the  Almanzor  of  Dry- 
den's  Conquest  of  Granada.  As  de- 
scribed by  Mr,  Bayes,  his  author,  he 


Dred 


129 


Dryfoos 


is  **a  great  fierce  hero,  that  frights 
his  mistress,  snubs  up  kings,  baSles 
armies  and  does  what  he  w2l  without 
regard  to  good  manners,  justice  or 
niimbers "  {The  Rehearsal,  Act  iv, 
Sc.  i).  So  popular  was  the  play  that 
Drawcansir  passed  into  a  synonym  for 
a  braggadocio. 

If  some  Drawcansir  you  aspire  to  draw. 
Present  him  raving,  and  above  all  law: 

Byron:    Hints  from  Horace,  1.  173. 

Henry  Fielding  assumed  the  name 
of  "  Sir  Alexander  Drawcansir  "  in 
the  editorship  of  the  Coveni  Garden 
Journal. 

Dred,  hero  of  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe's  novel  of  that  name  (1856),  a 
runaway  negro  living  in  the  Dismal 
Swamp. 

Dreeme,  Cecil,  in  Theodore  Win- 
throp's  novel  of  that  title  (1872),  the 
name  assumed  by  Clara  Denman 
when  she  dons  male  apparel  and 
passes  herself  off  as  a  man. 

Dromio  of  Ephesus  and  Dromio  of 
Syracuse,  in  Shakespeare's  Comedy  of 
Errors,  twin  brothers,  servants  re- 
spectively of  the  twin  Antipholuses, 
the  suffix  names  being  taken  from  the 
cities  in  which  the  two  pairs  of  master 
and  servant  respectively  settled  after 
the  family's  dispersal  by  shipwreck. 
The  first  Dromio  is  a  simpleton,  but 
he  of  Syracuse  is  a  merry  rogue 
described  by  his  master  as: 

A  trusty  villain,  sir,  that  very  oft 

When  I  am  dull  with  care  and  melancholy 

Lightens  my  humor  with  his  merry  jests. 

Drood,  Edwin,  hero  of  Dickens's 
novel.  The  Mystery  of  Edwin  Drood 
(1870),  which  mystery  was  left  un- 
solved by  the  death  of  the  author 
while  the  story  was  still  running  in 
monthly  parts.  Once  a  Week,  Febru- 
ary 18,  1 87 1,  first  chronicled  the  fact 
that  the  name,  though  nothing  else, 
was  suggested  by  that  of  Dickens's 
neighbor,  Edwin  Trood,  the  keeper  of 
a  public  house  near  Gad's  Hill. 

Drugger,  Abel,  in  Ben  Jonson's 
comedy,  The  Alchemist  (1610),  a 
simple-minded  tobacco  dealer  who 
applies  to  Subtle,  the  alchemist,  for 
advice  on  the  minutest  points — how 
to  set  his  shelves  so  as  to  secure  good 


luck,  on  what  days  he  might  trust  his 
customers,  what  days  were  unpropi- 
tious,  etc.  This  was  one  of  Garrick's 
favorite  parts.  Noticing  his  per- 
formance, Hannah  More  writes 
(1776):  "  I  should  have  thought  it 
as  possible  for  Milton  to  have  written 
Hudihras  and  Butler  Paradise  Lost 
as  for  one  man  to  have  played  Hamlet 
and  Drugger  with  so  much  excellence. 
There  is  a  story  that  a  young  lady 
who  had  fallen  in  love  with  Garrick 
as  Hamlet  was  cured  by  seeing  him  in 
Abel  Drugger.  On  this  hint  Robert- 
son constructed  his  play  David 
Garrick. 

Dryasdust,  The  Rev.  Dr.,  a  pre- 
tended assistant  in  the  preparation  of 
the  Waverley  novels,  first  introduced 
in  Scott's  Antiquary  as  a  correspond- 
ent of  Johnathan  Oldbuck.  Ivanhoe 
is  dedicated  to  this  "  grave  anti- 
quary; "  the  introductory  epistle  to 
Nigel  is  addressed ^  to  him;  he  is 
feigned  to  be  the  editor  of  Peveril  of 
the  Peak  and  the  writer  of  the  con- 
clusion to  Redgauntlet.  The  name, 
which  is  admirably  self-descriptive, 
has  passed  into  literary  and  colloquial 
use  as  a  synonym  for  a  musty  and 
dreary  pedant. 

Truth  is  the  Prussian  Dryasdust,  other- 
wise an  honest  fellow,  excels  all  other  Dry- 
asdusts yet  known.  I  have  often  sorrowfully 
felt  as  if  there  were  not  in  Nature,  for  dark- 
ness, dreariness,  immethodic  platitude  any- 
thing comparable  to  him. — Carlyle. 

Dryfoos,  in  William  D.  Howells's 
novel,  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes,  a 
Pennsylvania  German  who  has  made 
a  fortune  and  comes  to  New  York  to 
spend  it.  With  the  aid  of  Fulkerson, 
a  pushing  westerner,  as  manager,  he 
estabHshes  a  journal  entitled  Every 
Other  Week,  of  which  Basil  March 
becomes  editor.  He  is  vulgar,  ignor- 
ant and  coarse.  His  daughters, 
despite  some  superficial  culture,  in- 
herit his  nature,  their  one  devouring 
desire  being  to  enter  "  society." 
Not  so  the  son  of  the  family,  Conrad, 
whose  sympathies  are  all  with  the 
laboring  classes,  the  unfortunate  and 
the  downtrodden  of  the  metropo- 
lis. Conrad  is  killed  by  a  chance 
shot   during   a  strike  of  street-car 


Duchess 


130 


Duke 


drivers  and  conductors  while  he  is 
trying  to  shield  their  open  sympa- 
thizer, Lindau. 

Duchess,  The,  in  Browning's  poem, 
The  Flight  of  the  Duchess,  is  married 
to  a  pompous  and  narrow-minded 
dvtke  whose  chief  ambition  is  to  repro- 
duce Middle  Age  customs  in  elaborate 
detail.  One  day  he  brings  home  a 
sunny-haired  and  sunny-hearted  bride 
from  a  convent.  He  and  his  austere 
mother,  by  indifference  and  repres- 
sion, do  their  best  to  crush  her  spirit. 
She  dejectedly  declines  to  take  part 
in  a  carefully  arranged  mediaeval 
hunting  party.  To  rebuke  her  by  a 
sense  of  contrast  the  duke  sends  in  to 
her  an  aged  gypsy  crone,  squalid  and 
wretched  looking.  The  crone  is  really 
a  gypsy  queen.  She  assumes  her 
royal  aspect  before  the  duchess,  holds 
out  to  her  a  vista  of  the  free  life 
that  awaits  her  if  she  will  join  the 
gypsies,  or  of  a  greater  joy  in  giving 
her  "  wondrous  self"  to  "a  stronger 
nature's  sway."  The  duchess  flees 
with  the  crone  and  is  never  seen 
again. 

Dudu,  in  Byron's  Don  Juan  (1824), 
one  of  three  beauties  in  the  harem  of 
a  Turkish  Sultan,  into  which  Juan, 
disguised  as  a  woman,  has  been 
hurriedly  smuggled  by  order  of  the 
Sultana.  The  others  are  Lolah  and 
Katinka.  All  three  are  drawn  from 
the  daughters  of  Theodora  Macri,  an 
Athenian  lady  with  whom  Byron 
lodged  in  1 809- 1 8 1  o.  He  thus  alludes 
to  them  in  a  letter  to  his  former  tutor 
Professor  Fry:  "  I  came  near  forget- 
ting to  tell  you  that  I  am  dying  of  love 
for  three  sisters  who  inhabit  the  same 
house  with  me;  three  Greeks,  sisters, 
Theresa,  Mariana  and  Katinga. 
These  are  the  names  of  these  divini- 
ties; the  eldest  isn't  fifteen."  To 
Moore  and  to  Murray,  his  publisher, 
he  likewise  thinks  it  important 
enough  to  make  known  his  amorous 
inchnations  toward  these  three  aston- 
ishing Greek  maidens. 

It  was  Theresa,  the  eldest  (Dudu), 
whom  Childe  Harold  addressed  as 
the  "Maid  of  Athens"  (see  Athens, 
Maid  of)  in  a  passionate  song  of 
farewell. 


Lolah  was  dusk  as  India  and  as  warm; 

Katinka  was  a  Georgian,  white  and  red. 
With  great  blue  eyes,  a  lovely  hand  and  arm. 
And  feet  so  small  they  scarce  seemed  made 
to  tread, 
But  rather  skim  the  earth;  while  Dudu's 
form 
Looked  more  adapted  to  be  put  to  bed. 
Being  somewhat  large,  and  languishing,  and 

lazy, 
Yet  of  a  beauty  that  would  drive  you  crazy. 

A  kind  of  sleepy  Venus  seemed  Dudu 

Yet  very  fit  to  "murder  sleep"  in  those 
Who  gazed  upon  her  cheek's  transcendent 
hue, 
Her  Attic  forehead,  and  her  Phidian  nose: 
Few  angles  were  there  in  her  form,  't  is  true. 
Thinner  she  might  have  been,  and  yet 
scarce  lose; 
Yet,  after  all,  't  would  puzzle  to  say  where 
It  would  not  spoil  some  separate  charm  to 
pare. 

Don  Juan,  Canto  vi. 

Duessa  (Lat.  duo,  two,  and  essa,  a 
feminine  termination),  in  Spenser's 
Faerie  Queene,  Book  i,  the  double- 
minded  counterpart  to  the  single- 
souled  Una.  She  represents  the 
papacy  in  a  general  way  but,  more 
specifically,  the  threatening  figure  of 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  whose  suc- 
cession to  Elizabeth  would  have 
meant  the  restoration  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  faith  in  England.  She  lures 
the  Red  Cross  Knight  to  the  palace 
of  Lucifera  where  Orgoglio  (Pride) 
casts  him  into  a  dungeon,  after  which 
he  marries  Duessa.  For  the  bridal 
ceremony  Orgoglio  arrays  her  in 
gorgeous  apparel  with  a  triple  crown 
(or  tiara)  upon  her  head  and  sets  her 
on  a  monster  beast  with  seven  heads 
(see  Revelation,  ).    Arthur  comes 

to  the  rescue  of  the  Red  Cross  Knight, 
slays  Orgoglio,  wounds  the  beast, 
releases  the  knight  and  strips  Duessa 
of  her  finery,  whereupon  she  flees  into 
the  wilderness  to  hide  her  shame. 
This  part  of  Spenser's  poem  is  taken 
in  almost  literal  translation  from 
Ariosto's  Orlando  Furioso,  where  the 
loathly  lady  is  called  Alcina. 

Duke,  "  living  in  exile,"  in  Shake- 
speare's comedy  As  You  Like  It,  a 
philosophical  potentate  who  finds 
**  good  in  everything "  even  when 
suffering  wrong  at  the  hands  of  an 
evil  brother. 

And  the  comfortable  old  Duke,  symboli- 
cal of  the  British  villa  dweller,  who  likes  to 
find  "sermons  in  stones  and  good  in  every- 


Dulcinea 


131 


Dunces 


thing,"  and  then  to  have  a  good  dinner  I 
This  unvenerable  impostor,  expanding  on 
his  mixed  diet  of  pious  twaddle  and  venison, 
rouses  my  worst  passions.  Even  when 
Shakespeare,  in  his  eflForts  to  be  a  social 
philosopher,  does  rise  for  an  instant  to  the 
level  of  a  sixth-rate  Kingsley,  his  solemn 
self-complacency  infuriates  me.  And  yet, 
so  wonderful  is  his  art,  that  it  is  not  easy 
to  disentangle  what  is  unbearable  from  what 
is  irresistible. — G.  B.  Shaw:  Dramatic 
Opinions  and  Essays. 

Dulcinea  del  Toboso,  in  Cervantes' 
Don  Quixote  (1605),  the  lady  whom 
the  Don,  in  true  knight-errant  fash- 
ion, selects  as  the  object  of  his  love. 
"  Her  name,"  we  are  told,  "  was 
Aldonza  Lorenzo,  and  her  he  pitched 
upon  to  be  the  lady  of  his  thoughts; 
then  casting  about  for  a  name  which 
should  have  some  affinity  with  her 
own,  and  yet  incline  toward  that  of  a 
great  lady  and  princess,  he  resolved 
to  call  her  Dulcinea  del  Toboso  (for 
she  was  bom  at. that  place),  a  name 
to  his  thinking,  harmonious,  tmcom- 
mon  and  significant."  She  was 
merely  a  fresh-colored  coimtry  wench, 
but  the  Don  describes  her  thus: 
"  Her  flowing  hair  is  of  gold,  her  fore- 
head the  Elysian  Fields,  her  eye- 
brows two  celestial  arches,  her  eyes 
a  pair  of  glorious  suns,  her  cheeks 
two  beds  of  roses,  her  lips  two  coral 
portals  that  guard  her  teeth  of  orien- 
tal pearl,  her  neck  is  alabaster,  her 
hands  are  polished  ivory  and  her 
bosom  whiter  than  the  new  fallen 
snow."  Sancho,  in  Part  I,  iii,  11, 
views  her  very  differently. 

Dulness,  "  daughter  of  Chaos  and 
Eternal  Night,"  is  a  personification 
celebrated  in  Pope's  satirical  poem, 
The  Dunciad  (1728-1742),  as  a  god- 
dess and  queen.  She  selects  a  favorite 
to  reign  over  her  kingdom.  In  the 
early  issues  the  choice  fell  upon  Theo- 
bald ( 1 688-1 744),  who  had  severely 
criticized  Pope's  edition  of  Shake- 
speare— to  the  marked  improvement 
of  subsequent  editions.  In  1743  Pope 
substituted  CoUey  Cibber  for  Theo- 
bald, a  still  greater  mistake,  for 
Cibber  was  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
men  of  his  day.  Having  selected  her 
favorite,  Dulness  transports  him  to 
the  Elysian  shades  and  unfolds  before 
him  a  vision  of  her  triumphs — past, 


present  and  future.  The  last  book 
represents  her  coming  in  triumph  to 
establish  her  universal  dominion. 

Dumaln,  in  Shakespeare's  Love's 
Labor's  Lost,  a  French  lord  in  attend- 
ance on  the  King  of  Navarre  thus 
described: 

For  he  hath  wit  to  make  an  ill  shape  good 
And  shape  to  win  grace  though  he  had  no 
wit. 

Act  i,  Sc.  J. 

Dumbie,  Jock,  laird  of  Dumbie- 
dykes  after  the  death  of  his  greedy, 
grasping  father,  is  a  bashful  young 
Scotchman  in  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
Heart  of  Midlothian,  "  a  tall,  gawky, 
silly-looking  boy,"  who  falls  in  love 
with  Jeanie  Deans.  For  many  years 
his  admiration  contents  itself  with 
"  pertinaciously  gazing  on  her  with 
great  stupid  greenish  eyes." 

The  railway  mishap  which  occurred  on 
Friday  last  at  Irongray,  near  Dumfries, 
reminds  us,"  writes  a  correspondent,  "that 
Jeanie  Deans  lies  buried  in  the  parish 
churchyard.  Jeanie  Deans  in  real  li^  was 
Helen  Walker,  but  the  scenes  in  which  she 
is  associated  in  The  Heart  of  Midlothian  are 
laid  in  and  around  Edinburgh,  and  tradition 
still  points  out  her  cottage  near  Duddings- 
ton,  where  the  young  laird  of  Dumbledykes, 
after  his  father's  death,  in  the  old  man's 
tarnished  laced  hat  and  coat,  used  to  sit 
silent  with  an  empty  tobacco  pipe  in  his 
mouth,  glaring  at  Jeanie  for  an  hour  at  a 
time,  deluding  himself  that  he  was  making 
love  to  her." — London  Globe,  191 1. 

Duncan,  King  of  Scotland,  who 
succeeded  to  the  throne  about  1034 
and  was  assassinated  through  the 
treachery  of  Macbeth,  Mormaer  of 
Moray,  in  1040,  appears  in  Shake- 
speare's tragedy,  Macbeth,  as  a  just 
and  gentle  ruler  whose  virtues  em- 
phasize "  the  deep  damnation  of  his 
taking  off."  This  character  is  given 
to  him  in  Hollinshed's  Chronicles, 
from  whom  Shakespeare  derived  his 
story,  but  earlier  historians  describe 
him  as  unjust  and  weak.  The  cir- 
cumstances of  the  murder  are  not  as 
Hollinshed  gives  them;  they  are 
taken  from  the  historian's  account  of 
the  assassination  of  Eling  Duff  (967) 
by  Donwald  and  his  wife  in  their 
castle  at  Fores. 

Dunces,  King  of  the,  in  Alexander 
Pope's  mock-heroic  epic,  The  Dunciad 


Dundreary 


132 


Durbeyfield 


(1728),  was  originally  Lewis  Theo- 
bald, the  Shakespearean  editor  and 
critic.  Colley  Gibber,  however,  in- 
curred the  enmity  of  Pope  by  bur- 
lesquing the  farce.  Three  Hours  after 
Marriage,  and  he  eventually  displaced 
Theobald  as  the  hero  of  the  satire. 
The  choice  of  Theobald  was  suffi- 
ciently unjust — he  was  a  man  of  more 
than  average  parts;  but  the  substitu- 
tion of  Gibber  was  absurd,  as  he  was 
one  of  the  liveliest  wits  of  the  day,  an 
excellent  actor,  a  successful  dramatist, 
and  a  failure  only  as  a  poet. 

Dundreary,  Lord,  in  Tom  Taylor's 
comedy,  Our  American  Cousin,  a 
typical  EngHsh  "  swell  "  of  the  titled 
classes,  courteous  and  well  bred 
though  carrying  himself  with  aristo- 
cratic nonchalance,  foppish,  indolent, 
absurd,  with  a  befogged  brain  that  is 
ever  employed  in  ingenious  misinter- 
pretations of  the  obvious.  Originally 
the  part  was  an  insignificant  one, 
containing  only  forty-seven  lines, 
but  when  it  was  entrusted  to  E.  A. 
Sothem  he  continuously  added  new 
jokes  and  new  business  until  in  his 
version  Dundreary  eventually  over- 
shadowed Asa  Trenchard,  the 
"  American  Gousin,"  and  became 
the  chief  feature  in  the  play. 

Dunn,  Davenport,  hero  of  a  novel 
of  that  name  (1859)  by  G.  J.  Lever, 
a  clever  commercial  swindler  whose 
operations  involve  the  fortunes  of 
princes  and  who  is  eventually  "  done" 
by  his  rival,  Grog  Davis.' 

Dupin,  C.  Auguste,  an  amateur 
detective  introduced  into  three  of 
Poe's  tales — The  Murders  in  the  Rue 
Morgue,  The  Mystery  of  Marie  Roget, 
and  The  Purloined  Letter — in  all  of 
which  he  is  represented  as  rendering 
important  services  to  the  Parisian 
police  by  unravelling  apparently 
insoluble  mysteries.  According  to  a 
letter  published  (1879)  in  the  New 
York  World  and  signed  F.  D.  G.,  the 
character  was  drawn  after  a  real 
person,  one  G.  Aug[ust«  Dupont,  a 
man  of  acute  analytiaal  powers,  who 
was  frequently  called  in  to  aid  the 
police  in  the  manner  Poe  describes. 
The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue, 
indeed,  is  very  largely  founded  upon 


facts,  which  F.  D.  G.  claims  to  have 
supplied  to  Poe,  having  learned  them 
from  Dupont  himself,  with  whom  he 
was  very  closely  associated  during  a 
sojourn  of  seven  years  in  Paris. 
"  Dupont,"  he  adds,  "  merely  laughed 
when  he  saw  his  name  disguised  in 
Gharles  Baudelaire's  translation,  nor 
did  he  ever  take  offence  at  the  liberty 
I  had  taken  in  sending  to  Poe  the 
true  facts  of  the  solution  of  the  mys- 
tery— ^facts  which  in  their  results 
were,  of  course,  well  known  to  the 
police  authorities,  although  not  in 
their  details.  Dupont  had  done  more 
work  for  the  police  than  ever  came 
to  Poe's  knowledge:  if  Poe  had  not 
used  the  name  under  so  thin  a  dis- 
guise he  might  have  learned  more, 
and  perhaps  would  have  written 
better  and  more  astounding  and 
analytical  tales." 

Duplessis,  Marie,  the  name  in  real 
life  of  the  Parisian  courtesan  who 
became  the  Marguerite  Gauthier 
(q.v.)  of  Dumas's  LaDame  aux  Came- 
lias  and  the  Violetta  Valery  of  La 
Traviata. 

D'Urberville,  Alec,  in  Hardy's  Tess 
of  the  D' Urbervilles  (1891),  the 
seducer  of  the  heroine.  "  Despite  the 
touches  of  barbarism  in  liis  contours 
there  was  a  singular  force  in  the 
gentleman's  face,  and  his  bold,  rolling 
eye."  When  Tess  flees  from  the 
household  in  which  he  is  the  son  and 
heir  and  she  a  mere  servant,  Alec 
experiences  a  brief  fit  of  reform.  He 
takes  to  field  preaching,  and  during 
his  consequent  wanderings  he  again 
meets  Tess.  She  has  been  abandoned 
by  her  husband,  Angel  Glare.  By 
misrepresenting  Angel's  feelings  and 
intentions  Alec  persuades  her  to 
accompany  him  to  Sandboume,  and 
she  ends  by  slaying  her  double 
betrayer. 

Durbeyfield,  Tess,  heroine  of 
Hardy's  novel,  Tess  of  the  D*  Urber- 
villes. Her  father  fancies  himself  a 
member  of  the  leading  county  family, 
the  D' Urbervilles.  On  the  basis  of 
this  supposed  relationship  she  applies 
for  a  position;  is  engaged  through  the 
influence  of  the  elder  son  Alec,  a 
debauched    youth,    who    plans    to 


Durgin 


133 


Easy 


seduce  her  and  succeeds.  A  child  is 
bom  and  dies.  Eight  years  later  she 
marries  Angel  Clare,  who  abandons 
her  on  the  wedding  night  when  she 
reveals  to  him  her  past.  From  being 
a  victim  of  the  natural  vices  of  man 
she  thus  becomes  a  victim  also  of  his 
conventional  virtues.  Both  Alec  and 
Angel  eventually  seek  to  regain  her 
but  Alec  acts  treacherously  in  regard 
to  Angel  and  she  kills  him. 

Durgin,  Jeff,  in  Howells's  novel, 
The  Landlord  of  the  Lion  Inn  (1897), 
is  the  titular  landlord,  described  from 
his  surly  boyhood  to  his  college  days 
at  Harvard ;  and  then  to  manhood  and 
marriage  with  a  woman  of  superior 
station  and  culture. 

He  was  superior  to  most  men  In  beauty, 
force,  will,  temper;  about  scholarship  he 
was  indifferent;  the  only  equality  he  cared 
for  was  social  equality,  and,  before  he  had 
been  a  year  at  college,  he  saw  and  knew  he 
could  never  get  that.  His  vanity  was  hurt, 
but  he  was  not  disheartened  or  in  any  way 
discredited  to  himself.  He  made  no  struggle 
for  the  recognized  unattainable,  but  he  felt 
that  there  was  a  memorable  day  coming, 
soon  or  late,  when  he  should  get  even  with 
some  one  of  the  persons  who  represented 
this  unattainable. — N.  Y.  Nation* 

Durrie,  James,  in  R.  L.  Stevenson*s 
romance,  The  Master  of  Ballantrae 
(1889),  is  the  titular  "  Master."  He 
is  for  the  Pretender;  Henry,  his 
brother,  is  for  'King  George.  Alison 
Graeme  loves  James,  but  when  he  is 
reported  dead  she  makes  a  loveless 
marriage  with  Henry.  James  returns 
to  make  trouble  between  Alison  and 
Henry,  who  endures  the  double  per- 
secution with  patience  and  fortitude. 
The  brothers  at  last  meet  in  a  duel. 

The  Master  feigns  death  and  is 
buried  by  his  Hindoo  attendant, 
Secundra  Dass,  who  has  merely  put 
him  in  a  state  of  suspended  animation. 
In  digging  him  up  again  Secundra  is 
interrupted  by  the  arrival  of  Henry. 
James  lives  just  long  enough  to  open 
his  eyes, — at   which   vital   sign   his 


brother  falls  dead.    Both  are  buried 
in  one  grave  in  the  western  wilderness. 

The  Master  of  Ballantrae  is  stamped  with 
a  magnificent  unity  of  conception,  but  the 
story  illuminates  that  conception  by  a  series 
of  scattered  episodes.  That  lurid  embodi- 
ment of  fascinating  evil,  part  vampire,  par- 
Mephistopheles,  whose  grand  manner  and 
heroic  abilities  might  have  made  him  a  great 
and  good  man,  but  for  "the  malady  of  not 
wanting,"  is  the  light  and  meaning  of  the 
whole  book.  Innocent  and  benevolent  lives 
are  thrown  in  his  way  that  he  may  mock  or 
distort  or  shatter  them.  Stevenson  never 
came  nearer  than  in  this  character  to  the 
sublime  of  power. — Walter  Raleigh: 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  1895. 

Durward,  Quentin,  hero  and  title 
of  a  historical  romance  (1823)  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott.  A  nephew  of 
Ludovic  Lesly  (Le  Balafr^),  he  enrolls 
himself  in  the  Scottish  Guard  of 
Louis  XI  of  France,  saves  the  King's 
life  in  a  boarhunt,  wins  the  love  of  the 
Countess  of  Croye,  and  finally  mar- 
ries her.  As  Monseigneur  de  la  Croye 
he  reappears  in  the  same  author's 
Anne  of  Geir stein,  where  he  serves 
under  Charles  the  Bold,  Duke  of 
Burgundy. 

Duval,  Madame,  in  Fanny  Bur- 
ney's  novel  Evelina  (1778),  the  ter- 
rible grandmother  through  whom  the 
heroine  is  related  to  the  vulgar  Brang- 
tons  (q.v.).  An  English  servant  girl, 
she  had  eloped  with  Evelina's  grand- 
father and  led  him  many  years  of 
hapless  marriage  in  France.  After 
his  death  and  that  of  her  second 
husband  Duval,  she  returns  to  London 
just  as  Evelina  is  entering  the  fashion- 
able world  there,  and  becomes  the 
low  comedy  and  low  tragedy  of  the 
novel. 

She  is  not  only  very  awful  herself,  with 
a  French  bourgeois  vulgarity  thickly  over- 
laying her  English  servile  vulgarity,  but  she 
Is  surrounded  by  Evelina's  city  cousins,  who 
have  a  cockney  vulgarity  of  their  own,  and 
for  whom  she  claims  the  girl's  affection, 
together  with  her  duty  to  herself. — W.  D. 
HowELLS:    Heroines  of  Fiction. 


E 


East  Lymie,  in  the  novel  of  that 
name  by  Mrs  Henry  Wood,  the 
ancestral  home  of  the  Vane  family. 
See  Vane,  Lady  Isabel. 


Easy,  Sir  Charles,  in  CoUey  Gib- 
ber's comedy.  The  Careless  Husband 
(1704),  a  profligate  fine  gentleman  yet 
so  lazy,  even  in  his  amours,  that  "  he 


Easy 


134 


Edwin 


would  rather  lose  the  woman  of  his 
pursuit  than  go  through  any  trouble 
in  securing  or  keeping  her."  He 
leaves  his  love  letters  scattered  about; 
he  even  forgets  to  lock  his  door 
against  imminent  detection;  and,  as  a 
consequence,  his  wife  knows  all 
though  she  forgives  all,  until  finally 
her  patience  and  constancy  win  him 
back  to  her. 

Easy,  Jack,  hero  of  a  romance  of 
the  sea,  Mr.  Midshipman  Easy,  by 
Captain  Frederick  Marryat  (1836), 
is  the  spoiled  son  of  a  so-called  phil- 
osopher. He  cruises  about  the  world, 
has  misfortunes,  and  at  last  good 
luck  and  a  happy  life. 

Ebony,  a  familiar  name  for  Black- 
wood's Magazine  and  for  its  proprie- 
tor, William  Blackwood  (i  777-1 834). 
It  was  first  used  in  the  Chaldee  MS, 
an  article  that  appeared  in  the  num- 
ber for  October,  18 17,  in  which  Black- 
wood is  introduced  in  these  terms: — 
"  And  I  looked,  and  behold  a  man 
clothed  in  plain  apparel  stood  in  the 
door  of  his  house;  and  I  saw  his  name, 
and  the  number  of  his  name;  and  his 
name  was  as  it  had  been  the  colour  of 
ebony." 

Eccles,  Robert,  in  George  Mere- 
dith's novel,  Rhoda  Fleming. 

There  is  a  great  deal  that  Is  lovable 
about  Robert  Eccles  despite  his  weakness 
for  drink  and  his  general  reckless  conduct. 
Something  in  him  reminds  one  of  Mr.  Jeffer- 
son's able  delineation  of  Rip  Van  Winkle; 
and  if  the  novel  had  appeared  later,  Mr. 
Meredith  might  possibly  have  been  told 
that  he  had  taken  the  clever  American  actor 
as  a  model.  Jonathan  Eccles  plays  a  sub- 
ordinate part,  but  he  never  comes  upon  the 
stage  without  impressing  the  reader  with 
his  life-like  reality. — London  Morning  Post, 
October  18,  1865. 

Edgar,  in  Shakespeare's  King  Lear, 
the  legitimate  son  and  heir  of  Glou- 
cester. Plotted  against  by  his  elder 
but  illegitimate  brother,  he  flies  (ii,  i), 
feigns  madness  (ii,  3;  iii,  4-6;  iv,  i), 
and  is  restored  to  his  place  in  the  last 
act.  His  unsuspicious  honesty  and 
simplicity  make  him  at  first  an  easy 
prey  to  his  brother's  schemes,  but  his 
patience  and  fortitude  win  out  at  last. 

Chiefly  Interesting  to  that  part  of  an 
audience  which  likes  to  be  called  upon  to 
sympathize  with  virtue  in  distress  and  to 
have  its  curiosity  excited  by  seeing  a  noble- 


man in  the  guise  of  a  beggar  .  .  .  He 
is  a  very  good  young  man;  but  like  many 
other  good  young  men  he  is  not  interesting 
in  himself — he  is  only  the  occasion  of  our 
interest  in  others.  The  drama  neither  rests 
upon  him  nor  moves  by  his  means;  and  yet 
without  him  it  would  halt. — Richard 
Grant  Whitk,  Atlantic  Monthly,  July, 
1880. 

Edmund,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy, 
King  Lear  (1605),  the  natural  son  of 
the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  who  succeeds 
in  disinheriting  his  younger  brother 
Edgar,  the  legitimate  issue.  Both 
Gonenl  and  Regan  are  in  love  with 
him,  and  the  latter  on  her  husband's 
death  designs  to  marry  him,  but  is 
poisoned  by  the  jealous  Goneril. 

Edmund  suggests  lago;  but  with  other 
minor  diflferences — differences  of  person  and 
of  manner — there  is  this  great  unlikeness 
between  them:  Edmund  is  not  spontane- 
ously malicious;  he  is  only  supremely  selfish 
and  utterly  unscrupulous.  For  he,  too,  has 
a  comprehensible  reason  for  his  base  and 
cruel  actions.  It  was  not  his  fault  that  he 
was  illegitimate.  He  was  no  less  his  father's 
son  than  Edgar  was;  and  yet  he  found  him- 
self with  a  branded  stigma  upon  his  name. 
This  is  not  even  a  palliation  of  his  villainy; 
but  it  is  a  motive  for  it  that  may  be  under- 
stood, lago's  villainy  is  the  outcome  of 
pure  malignity  of  nature. — Richard  Grant 
White. 

Edward  IV,  King  of  England  (1442- 
1483),  appears  in  Shakespeare's  his- 
torical dramas  Henry  VI  (Parts  II 
and  III)  and  in  Richard  III.  In 
//  Henry  IV  he  appears  only  in 
V,  I,  as  Edward,  son  of  the  Duke  of 
York.  In  ///  Henry  7  F  he  is  intro- 
duced in  Scene  I  as  Earl  of  March. 
On  the  death  of  his  father  at  Wake- 
field (i,  4)  he  becomes  Duke  of  York 
and  claimant  to  the  throne.  Defeat- 
ing the  Lancastrians  he  was  pro- 
claimed King  in  London  and  secured 
his  throne  by  his  victory,  May  4, 
1 47 1,  at  Tewksbury  (v,  4).  The 
profligate  character  attributed  to  him 
by  Shakespeare  is  historical. 

Edwin,  hero  of  a  ballad  by  Oliver 
Goldsmith  introduced  into  the  Vicar 
of  Wakefield  (1766)  and  there  called 
The  Hermit,  but  more  generally 
known  as  Edwin  and  Angelina. 

In  reply  to  the  accusation  that  he 
had  borrowed  from  Percy,  Goldsmith 
wrote:  "  I  do  not  think  there  is  any 
resemblance  between  the  two  pieces 
in  question.     If  there  be  any,   his 


Eglamour 


135 


Elizabeth 


ballad  is  taken  from  mine.  I  read  it 
to  Mr.  Percy  some  years  ago,  and 
he  told  me,  with  his  usual  good 
humor,  the  next  time  I  saw  him,  that 
he  had  taken  my  plan  to  form  the 
fragments  of  Shakespeare  into  a 
ballad  of  his  own." 

Edwin,  hero  of  Henry  Taylor's 
Edwin  the  Fair,  an  Historical  Drama 
(1842)  which  follows  pretty  closely 
the  facts  in  the  brief  reign  of  the 
Saxon  Edwin,  his  luckless  marriage 
to  his  cousin  Elgiva,  the  annulment 
of  that  marriage  through  the  influence 
of  Dunstan,  the  imprisonment  of 
Edwin  and  his  release  by  his  parti- 
sans, the  death  of  Elgiva  at  the  hands 
of  some  of  Dunstan's  adherents,  the 
defeat  and  death  of  Edwin,  and  the 
terrible  onslaught  of  the  Danes  which 
overwhelms  Dunstan's  party  in  the 
flush  of  victory  while  they  are  cele- 
brating their  victory  over  Edwin. 
The  best  drawn  character  is  Dunstan, 
who,  whether  he  be  the  Dunstan  of 
history  or  not,  is  at  least  natural  and 
consistent. 

Eglamour,  in  Shakespeare's  com- 
edy, The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona 
(1594),  a  character  who  aids  in  Silvia's 
escape  from  her  father's  court. 

Egmont,  Lamoral,  Count  of  (1522- 
1568),  a  Flemish  general  and  popular 
leader,  who  fought  under  Charles 
V  and  subsequently,  though  himself 
a  Catholic,  opposed  the  proselytizing 
schemes  of  Philip  II  and  was  treach- 
erously seized  and  executed  in  com- 
pany with  the  Count  of  Hoom.  He 
is  the  hero  of  Goethe's  tragedy 
Egmont  (1788). 

For  the  exceptional  popularity  of  Egmont 
a  single  sentence  from  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes's 
Life  of  Goethe  sufficiently  accounts:  "As 
a  tragedy,  criticism  makes  sad  work  with 
It;  but  when  all  is  said,  the  reader  thinks 
of  Egmont  and  Clarchen,  and  flings  criti- 
cism to  the  dogs."  That  Clarchen  has 
secvired  for  her  lover  his  position  with  the 
general  multitude  there  is  no  doubt,  though, 
strange  to  say,  the  connexion  between  this 
prettiest  of  plebeian  sinners  and  her  aristo- 
cratic adorer  has  drawn  upon  Goethe  more 
censure  than  anything  else  in  the  piece. 
Schiller,  who  criticized  Egmont  shortly  after 
its  publication,  and  before  his  intimacy 
with  its  author  began,  could  not  sufficiently 
lament  the  departure  from  history  which 
made  of  the  Flemish  patriot  the  protector 
of  a  damsel  of  low  degree,  instead  of  being, 


as  he  actually  was,  a  respectable  pater- 
familias, with  a  devoted  wife  of  lofty  birth 
and  eleven  children.  Moral  propriety  and 
historical  truth  were  both  hit  with  one 
recklessly  flung  stone. — Saturday  Review. 

Elaine.  In  the  Arthurian  cycle  of 
romances  there  are  several  ladies  of 
this  name,  chief  among  whom  stands 
**  the  lily  maid  of  Astolat  "  who  fell 
in  love  with  Lancelot  and,  learn- 
ing who  he  was  and  that  he  was 
bound  to  celibacy,  pined  away  and 
died.  In  a  juvenile  poem  Tennyson 
celebrated  her  as  The  Lady  of  Shalott; 
later  he  included  her  story  in  his 
Idylls  of  the  King.  Following  the 
version  of  Sir  Thomas  Malory,  in 
the  prose  Morte  d' Arthur y  iii,  123 
(1470),  Tennyson  makes  it  her  dying 
request  that  her  body  shall  be  placed 
in  a  barge  and  thus  conveyed  by  a 
dumb  servitor  down  the  Thames  to 
King  Arthur's  palace.  A  letter  ad- 
dressed to  the  king  tells  the  story  of 
her  love  and  he  orders  it  to  be 
blazoned  on  her  tomb. 

Eleanor,  heroine  of  Mrs.  Ward's 
novel  of  that  name.  See  Manisty, 
Edward. 

Elena,  heroine  of  On  the  Eve,  a 
novel  by  Ivan  Tourgenief ,  a  pure  and 
emotional  girl,  whose  eyes  are  opened 
through  love  to  the  full  comprehen- 
sion of  life.  Her  passion  for  Insgrov 
develops  womanhood  in  her  virgin 
sotd  and  sweeps  all  before  it  to  a 
tragic  consimimation. 

Elizabeth,  heroine  of  a  romance, 
Elizabeth  ou  les  Exilis  en  Siherie 
(1806),  by  Mme.  Sophie  R.  Cottin, 
founded  on  the  true  story  of  Prascovie 
Lepourloff. 

Elizabeth,  the  18-year-old  daugh- 
ter of  Polish  parents  exiled  to  Siberia, 
determined  to  seek  the  Czar  in  person 
and  implore  his  pardon.  She  sets  out, 
accompanied  by  an  old  priest  who  is 
on  his  way  westward,  but  he  dies 
before  the  journey  is  half  done.  She 
continues  bravely  on  alone,  crossmg 
forests  and  rivers,  triumphing  over 
all  dangers,  until  at  last  she  reaches 
Moscow.  Her  story  comes  to  the 
ears  of  the  Emperor  Alexander  on 
his  coronation  day  in  180 1,  he  adniits 
her  to  his  presence,  and  grants  her 
request.     The  same  story  has  been 


Elizabetti 


136 


Ellinor 


told  by  Xavier  de  Maistre  under  the 
title  La  Jeune  Siberienne, 

Elizabeth,  in  Elizabeth  and  Her 
German^  Garden  (published  anony- 
mously in  1898  but  now  known  to  be 
by  Marie  Annette,  Countess  von  Ar- 
nim,  nie  Beauchamp),  is,  like  her 
creator,  an  English  woman  married  to 
a  German  aristocrat.  The  latter  is 
humorously  styled  "  The  Man  of 
Wrath."  Elizabeth,  wearied  of  the 
empty  splendors  of  city  life,  persuades 
her  husband  to  retire  to  an  old  family 
estate  in  the  country  and  redeem  it 
from  decay.  In  the  course  of  the 
narrative  Elizabeth  reveals  herself  as 
a  vivacious  and  brilliant  woman  full 
of  life  and  energy,  of  enthusiasm  for 
nature;  of  delighted  and  delightful 
insight  into  human  foibles.  Further 
glimpses  of  the  same  character  are 
afforded  in  sequels:  The  Adventures 
of  Elizabeth  in  Rugen  (1904). 

Elizabeth,  daughter  of  the  king 
of  Hungary,  and  heroine  of  Charles 
Kingsley's  dramatic  poem,  The 
Saint's  Tragedy.  She  is  intended, 
says  the  author,  as  "  a  type  of^  two 
great  mental  struggles  of  the  Middle 
age;  first,  of  that  between  Scriptural 
or  unconscious,  and  Popish,  or  con- 
scious, purity;  in  a  word,  between 
innocence  and  prudery;  next,  of  the 
struggle  between  healthy  human 
affection  and  the  Manichasan  con- 
tempt with  which  a  celibate  clergy 
would  have  all  men  regard  the  name 
of  husband,  wife,  and  parent.  To 
exhibit  this  latter  falsehood  in  its 
miserable  consequences  is  the  main 
object  of  my  poem." 

Elizabeth,  heroine  of  Miss  Thack- 
eray's Story  of  Elizabeth.  See  Gil- 
MOUR,  Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth,  Queen  (1533- 1603),  ap- 
pears in  many  romances  and  dramas, 
but  in  none  more  effectively  than  in 
Sir  Walter  Scott's  Kenilworth.  Ac- 
cording to  this  authority  she  had  a 
character  "  strangely  compounded  of 
the  strongest  masculine  sense,  with 
those  foibles  which  are  chiefly  sup- 
posed proper  to  the  female  sex.  Her 
subjects  had  the  full  benefit  of  her 
virtues,  which  far  predominated  over 
her  weaknesses;   but  her  courtiers. 


and  those  about  her  person,  had  often 
to  sustain  sudden  and  embarrassing 
turns  of  caprice,  and  the  sallies  of  a 
temper  which  was  both  jealous  and 
despotic."  To  the  Earl  of  Leicester 
she  showed  "  all  those  light  and 
changeable  gales  of  caprice  and 
humour,  which  thwart  or  favour  the 
progress  of  a  lover  in  the  favour  of 
his  mistress,  and  she,  too,  a  mistress 
who  was  ever  and  anon  becoming 
fearful  lest  she  should  forget  the 
dignity  or  compromise  the  authority 
of  the  Queen,  while  she  indulged  the 
affections  of  a  woman."  Yet,  when 
by  his  own  confession  Leicester  was 
"doubly  false,"  and  "doubly  for- 
sworn," she  forgave  him,  and  saw  in 
him,  after  the  Countess's  tragic 
death,  "  the  object  rather  of  compas- 
sion than  resentment." 

Ellida,  heroine  of  Ibsen's  drama. 
The  Lady  from  the  Sea  (Fruen  fra 
Havet).  Ellida  the  lady  from  the  sea, 
before  her  marriage  with  Dr.  Wangel 
has  been  engaged  to  a  stranger,  a 
seafaring  person,  who  exercised  a 
kind  of  hypnotic  influence  over  her. 
Although  he  has  long  ago  disappeared 
from  her  part  of  the  country,  the 
mere  thought  of  him  continues  to 
have  a  power  over  her.  With  horror 
she  discovers  that  even  after  her 
marriage  she  remains  under  his  in- 
fluence. When  he  returns  to  claim 
her  she  is  on  the  point  of  leaving  her 
home  and  her  husband  to  follow  him. 
But  the  kindness  and  love  of  Dr. 
Wangel,  and  the  respect  he  shows  for 
her  own  independence  and  liberty  as 
an  individual,  even  with  regard  to 
her  sickly  infatuation,  liberate  her  at 
last  from  the  stranger's  influence. 
In  the  decisive  moment  she  elects  to 
remain  with  her  husband. 

Ellinor,  in  Miss  Edgeworth's  novel, 
Ennui  (1809),  an  old  Irish  nurse, 
"  the  most  delectable  personage," 
thinks  Francis  Jeffrey  {Essays,  p. 
516),  "  in  the  whole  tak  .  .^  , 
The  devoted  affection,  infantine 
simplicity,  and  strange,  pathetic  elo- 
quence of  this  half-savage,  kind- 
hearted  creature  afford  Miss  Edge- 
worth  occasion  for  many  most  original 
and  characteristic  representations." 


Elliot 


137 


Elsmere 


Elliot,  Anne,  heroine  of  Jane 
Austen's  novel,  Persuasion  (1818). 
Tender,  suffering  and  sensitive,  she 
is  the  most  interesting  of  Jane 
Austen's  women  next  to  the  blooming 
and  joyous  Emma  Woodhouse. 

Of  Anne  Elliot  [Miss  Austen]  wrote  to  a 
friend:  "You  may  perhaps  like  her,  as  she 
is  almost  too  good  for  me."  She  is  too  good 
for  most  of  us  but  not  the  less  charming,  and 
even  the  brilliancy  of  Elizabeth  Bennett 
pales  a  little  before  the  refined  womanliness 
of  this  delightful  English  lady  .  .  . 
There  can  be  no  sort  of  question  as  to  the 
absolute  bliss  of  Anne  Elliot  and  Captain 
Went  worth,  who  is  another  of  those  pleas- 
ant, manly  naval  ofiBcers  whom  Miss  Austen, 
drawing  no  doubt  from  material  in  her  own 
family  circles,  depicts  so  delightfully. — 
Austin  Dobson. 

Dear  Anne  Elliot! — sweet,  impulsive, 
womanly,  tender-hearted — one  can  almost 
hear  her  voice,  pleading  the  cause  of  all  true 
women.  .  .  .  Her  words  seem  to  ring 
in  our  ears  after  they  have  been  spoken. 
Anne  Elliot  must  have  been  Jane  Austen 
herself,  speaking  for  the  last  time.  There 
is  something  so  true,  so  womanly,  about  her, 
that  it  is  impossible  not  to  love  her.  She  is 
the  bright-eyed  heroine  of  the  earlier  novels, 
matured,  chastened,  cultivated,  to  whom 
fidelity  has  brought  only  greater  depth  and 
sweetness  instead  of  bitterness  and  pain. — 
Lady  Anne  Thackeray  Ritchie:  Jane 
Austen,  Cornhill  Magazine. 

EUiot,  Sir  Walter,  of  Kellynch  Hall, 
in  Persuasion,  father  of  Anne  and  one 
of  Jane  Austen's  most  amusing  bores, 
vain  and  pompous  and  ever  mastered 
by  appearances.  Having  to  let 
Kellynch  he  is  properly  condescending 
over  the  business,  but  is  kind  enough 
to  admit  that  his  tenant,  Admiral 
Croft,  is  the  best  looking  sailor  he 
ever  saw,  and  even  goes  so  far  as  to 
say  that  if  his  own  man  had  the 
arranging  of  the  Admiral's  hair  he 
should  not  be  at  all  ashamed  to  be 
seen  with  him. 

Ellison,  Kitty,  heroine  of  A 
Chance  Acquaintance,  by  W.  D. 
Howells  (1873).  A  western  girl,  she 
has  had  none  of  the  advantages  of 
fashionable  finishing  schools,  but  has 
m  been  reared  among  sensible  people, 
^'  who  attended  to  the  homely  duties 
of  life  and  had  only  time  to  spare  for 
heartfelt  interest  in  Abolitionism. 
From  the  glimpse  we  get  of  her  past 
it  is  easy  to  see  how  well  it  encouraged 
the  independence  and  individuaUty 


of  her  character  and  the  humor  which 
rarely  fails  her.  See  Arburton, 
Miles. 

With  Kitty  Mr.  Howells  has  been  re- 
markably successful;  he  has  drawn  a  really 
charming  girl  and  how  difficult  and  rare  a 
thing  that  is  to  do  every  novel  reader  can 
testify.  All  her  part  in  the  love-making, 
her  innocence,  her  readiness  to  be  pleased, 
her  kindness  toward  Arburton 's  foibles,  her 
sensitive  dignity,  her  charming  humor, 
belong  to  a  real  human  being,  not  to  the 
familiar  lay  figure. — N.  Y.  Nation. 

Eloisa,  the  heroine  and  the  feigned 
writer  of  Pope's  Epistle  from  Eloisa 
to  Abelard,  in  which  the  lady,  im- 
mured in  her  convent,  pours  out  her 
passion  for  her  lost  love.  Hallam 
holds  that  Pope  has  done  injustice 
to  Heloisa's  character,  in  putting  into 
her  mouth  sentiments  proper  only  to 
an  improper  woman.  Her  refusal  to 
marry  Abelard  arose,  not  from  an 
abstract  predilection  for  the  name  of 
mistress  above  that  of  wife,  but  from 
her  disinterested  affection,  which 
would  not  deprive  him  of  the  pros- 
pect of  ecclesiastical  dignities,  to 
which  his  genius  and  renown  might 
lead  hiin.  As  to  Abelard  (q.v.)  he 
would  willingly  have  repaired  by  mar- 
riage the  injury  that  he  had  done  her. 

Elsie,  the  heroine  of  Longfellow's 
dramatic  poem  of  The  Golden  Legend, 
in  love  with  Prince  Henry  von  Aue. 
See  Aue,  in  volume  11. 

Elsmere,  Robert,  hero  of  a  novel 
so  entitled  (1888)  by  Mrs.  Humphrey 
Ward.  A  young,  sensitive  clergyman, 
fresh  from  the  old  world  environment 
of  Oxford,  he  marries  Catherine  Ley- 
bum,  a  woman  of  sternly  orthodox 
mind,  who  loves  him  but  can  neither 
understand  nor  sympathize  with  him 
when  he  finds  that  he  must  renounce 
the  conventional  conception  of  Chris- 
tianity for  a  more  liberal  faith,  better 
fitted,  as  he  thinks,  to  the  needs  of 
the  age.  Heartbroken  by  his  apos- 
tacy,  Catherine  nevertheless  accom- 
panies him  to  London,  where  he  works 
among  the  poor  on  the  east  side,  and 
founds  a  new  brotherhood  of  Chris- 
tians. In  the  introduction  to  The 
Case  of  Richard  Meynell  (McClure's 
Magazine,  19 13)  Mrs.  Ward  says  that 
"^  Elsmere  is  a  figure  of  pure  imagina- 
tion, inspired  and  colored  as  all  such 


Elton 


138 


Emily 


figures  are,  by  the  actual  human 
experience  amid  which  he  was  con- 
ceived. In  the  picture  of  the  Squire 
those  who  knew  Mark  Pattison  at 
Lincoln  College  may  have  recognized 
a  few  of  his  more  obvious  traits." 

Squire  Wendover  is  the  friend 
wliose  opinions  on  the  question  of 
evidence  as  applied  to  the  story  of 
Christ  have  great  weight  with  Els- 
mere.  See  Casaubon,  Grey,  Henry, 
and  Langham. 

Elton,  Mrs.,  in  Jane  Austen's  novel, 
Emma,  the  finished  type  of  a  femi- 
nine bore. 

Whether  she  Is  Irritating  poor  Emma 
as  she  dines  at  Hartfield  in  lace  and  pearls, 
patronizing  sweet,  patient  Jane  Fairfax, 
exploring  at  Box  Hill,  or  officiating  at  Mr. 
Knightley's  strawberry  party  with  a  little 
basket  and  a  pick  riband,  she  is  always 
Intolerable.  Mrs.  Elton  goads  even  Jane 
into  a  bitterness  and  an  eloquence  very 
rare  in  Miss  Austen's  heroines;  she  is  worse 
still  with  her  underbred  chaflE  upon  Jane's 
engagement. 

Elvira,  in  Dryden's  drama,  The 
Spanish  Friar  (1680),  the  wife  of 
Gomez,  a  rich  old  banker.  She  is 
assisted  by  Friar  Dominick  in  an 
intrigue  with  Colonel  Lorenzo,  who 
turns  out  to  be  her  own  brother. 

Emanuel,  Paul,  in  Charlotte 
Bronte's  Villette,  the  principal  of  the 
Brussels  school  in  which  Lucy  Snowe 
obtains  employment  as  a  *  teacher. 
He  is  drawn  after  M.  H^ger,  proprie- 
tor of  the  school  where  the  author 
herself  was  a  teacher. 

Charlotte  Bronte's  genius  was  ardently 
impatient  of  the  actual;  it  cared  only  for 
Its  own.  At  the  least  hint  from  experience 
It  was  off.  A  glance,  a  gesture  of  M. 
H6ger's  was  enough  to  fire  it  to  the  concep- 
tion of  Paul  Emanuel.  He  had  only  to  say 
a  kind  word  to  her,  to  leave  a  book  or  a  box 
of  bonbons  in  her  desk  (if  he  did  leave  bon- 
bons) for  Charlotte's  fire  to  work  on  him. 
She  nad  only  to  say  to  herself,  "This  little 
man  is  adorable  in  friendship.  I  wonder 
what  he  would  be  like  in  love,"  and  she  saw 
that  he  would  be  something,  though  not 
altogether,  like  Paul  Emanuel.  She  had 
only  to  feel  a  pang  of  half-humorous,  half- 
remorseful  affection  for  him,  and  she  felt 
what  Lucy  felt  like  in  her  love-sick  agony. 
As  for  Madame  H6ger,  Madame's  purely 
episodic  jealousy,  her  habits  of  surveillance, 
her  small  inscrutabilities  of  behavior,  be- 
came the  fury,  the  perfidy,  the  treachery  of 
Madame  Beck.  For  treachery  and  perfidy 
and  agony  and  passion  were  what  Charlotte 
wanted  for  Villette. — May  Sinclair,  The 
Three  BrontHs. 


Emile,  hero  of  a  didactic  romance, 
Emile  ou  de  l' Education  (1762),  by 
Jean  Jacques  Rousseau. 

The  book  opens  with  discussions 
of  a  system  of  education  which  might 
develop  first  the  perfect  man  and 
then  the  perfect  woman.  The  process 
is  next  shown  in  actual  operation; 
the  perfect  man  is  developed  in  Emile, 
the  perfect  woman  in  Sophie.  They 
meet  and  fall  in  love.  The  perfect 
tutor  superintends  their  marriage. 
The  couple  live  happy  among  woods 
and  fields,  but  in  an  evil  hour  they 
decide  upon  a  visit  to  Paris.  The 
artificial  atmosphere  of  society  stifles 
their  better  natures,  they  succumb  to 
the  corruptions  of  the  city,  fall  away 
and  are  separated.  Afterwards  Emile 
being  wrecked  on  a  desert  island,  finds 
a  priestess  there  who  is  no  other  than 
the  lost  Sophia  and  they  are  reunited. 
Restored  to  their  pristine  virtue  they 
renounce  the  conventional  world  and 
in  the  bosom  of  nature  they  live 
happy  ever  after.  A  famous  episode 
in  the  book  is  the  Confessions  of  a 
Savoyard  Vicar. 

Emilia,  in  Shakespeare's  Othello, 
the  wife  of  lago,  whom  he  suspects  of 
undue  intimacy  with  the  Moor. 

Emilia,  the  heroine  of  Chaucer's 
Knight's  Tale  and  all  other  versions 
of  the  story  of  Palamon  and  Arcite 
(see  Palamon).  A  beautiful  lady  of 
high  birth  she  was  beloved  by  both 
knights  and  was  won  by  Palamon. 
Shakespeare  gives  the  name  to  an 
attendant  on  Hermione  in  A  Winter's 
Tale;  but  has  made  it  specially  not- 
able as  the  name  of  lago's  wife  in  the 
tragedy  of  Othello,  introduced  in  ii,  i. 
She  reveals  her  husband's  perfidy  and 
he  stabs  her. 

Emily,  Little,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield,  the  niece  of  Daniel 
Peggotty.  David  meets  her  when 
they  are  both  children  and  falls  in 
love  with  her  infantile  graces.  Later 
she  is  engaged  to  Ham  Peggotty,  but 
elopes  with  the  fascinating  Steer- 
forth,  who  speedily  tires  of  her. 
Peggotty  sets  out  on  a  long  search 
for  her  and  her  seducer,  learns  of  the 
seducer's  death,  finds  her  and  brings 
her  home.    See  Peggotty. 


Enid 


139 


Esmeralda 


Enid.    See  Geraint. 

Enobarbus,  in  Shakespeare's  trag- 
edy, Antony  and  Cleopatra,  a  friend 
of  Antony,  bluff  roughspoken,  clear- 
sighted. 

Enobarbus,  who  sees  through  every  wile 
and  guile  of  the  queen,  is  as  it  were  a  chorus 
to  the  play,  a  looker-on  at  the  game;  he 
stands  clear  of  the  golden  haze  which  makes 
up  the  atmosphere  around  Cleopatra;  and 
yet  he  is  not  a  mere  critic  or  commentator. 
.  .  .  Enobarbus  himself  is  under  the 
influence  of  the  charm  of  Antony,  and  slays 
himself  because  he  has  wronged  his  master. 

DOWDEN. 

Epicene,  in  Ben  Jonson's  comedy, 
Epicene,  or  the  Silent  Woman  (1610), 
is  introduced  to  Morose  by  his  prodi- 
gal nephew  Delphine  as  a  silent 
woman  who  will  make  him  the  wife 
he  seeks.  For  Morose  is  a  selfish 
egotist,  hating  all  noise  and  all  sound 
save  that  of  his  own  voice.  In  the 
midst  of  the  wedding  festivities, 
which  Delphine  and  his  friends  en- 
liven by  their  iminvited  presence. 
Epicene  finds  her  tongue  and  displays 
an  obstreperous  temper.  Morose,  in 
despair,  agrees  that  if  Delphine  can 
obtain  a  divorce  he  will  settle  an 
allowance  on  him  and  make  him  his 
heir.  Delphine  then  reveals  that 
Epicene  is  a  boy  in  disguise. 

Enninia,  in  Tasso's  Jerusalem 
Delivered  (1575),  a  Syrian  maiden  in 
love  with  the  courteous  and  chivalric 
Tancred,  although  he  had  conquered 
her  father,  the  King  of  Antioch,  who 
was  slain  in  his  last  battle,  and  had 
made  a  prisoner  of  herself.  During 
the  siege  of  Jerusalem  by  the  cru- 
saders imder  Tancred,  she  donned 
the  armor  of  Clorinda,  sallied  out  into 
the  Christian  camp  and  after  many 
adventures  found  her  hero,  wounded 
almost  to  death,  and  nursed  him  back 
to  life  and  he^th.  Her  subsequent 
fate  is  not  recorded. 

Escarbagnas,  Countess  d',  in 
Moli^re's  comedy  of  that  name  (1671) 
is  a  caricature  of  the  flatulent  pre- 
tence of  the  rustic  noblesse.  Ignorant 
and  silly,  she  has  brought  back  from 
a  two  months'  visit  to  Paris  a  cheap 
imitation  of  Parisian  ways  and  words 
— to  the  great  bewilderment  of  her 
peasant    servants.      She    finds    her 


neighbors  insupportable  with  "  their 
airs  of  impertinent  equality,"  but  to 
pass  the  time  away  she  flirts  with 
Monsieur  the  Councillor  and  Mon- 
sieur the  Receiver  of  Taxes,  while  her 
heart  is  given  to  a  young  town  gallant 
who  makes  fun  of  her  behind  her  back. 

Esher,  Sir  Ralph,  hero  of  Leigh 
Hunt's  historical  romance.  Sir  Ralph 
Esher,  or  Memoirs  of  a  Gentleman  of 
the  Court  of  Charles  II  (1832),  cast 
in  the  form  of  an  autobiography. 

Sir  Ralph  tells  how  he  happened 
to  catch  a  vagrant  feather  from  the 
cap  of  Miss  Stewart,  which  he  pre- 
sented to  the  lady  with  so  much  grace, 
that  King  Charles  was  moved  and 
invited  him  to  Court.  There  he 
gained  the  confidence  of  Lady  Castle- 
maine,  discovered  an  old  acquaint- 
ance in  Nell  Gwynne,  found  some- 
times a  friend,  and  sometimes  an 
enemy  in  the  versatile  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham, fraternized  with  many  emi- 
nent literary  men,  fought  against 
the  Dutch  imder  the  Duke  of  York, 
won  the  esteem  of  Sir  Philip  Heme, 
was  his  confidant  in  a  love  affair 
and  braved  the  plague  of  London 
for  his  sake,  became  enamored  of 
a  young  lady  believed  to  be  the 
natural  daughter  of  the  Duke  of 
Ormond,  but  who  turns  out  to  be  the 
lawful  offspring  of  Lord  Waringstown, 
and  finally  closes  the  narrative  with 
the  double  marriage  of  Sir  Philip 
Heme  and  himself  to  the  ladies  of 
their  affection. 

Esmeralda,  in  Victor  Hugo's  Notre 
Dame  de  Paris  (1831),  a  gypsy  girl 
who,  with  tambourine  and  goat, 
dances  in  the  streets  of  mediaeval 
Paris.  Her  beauty  is  imadomed 
almost  to  the  point  of  nudity,  yet 
she  remains  pure  and  tmdefiled.  She 
is  in  love  with  a  captain  in  the  gendar- 
merie of  Louis  XI,  but  the  creature 
who  loves  her  best  is  Quasimodo,  the 
hunchback  bell-ringer,  for  whom  she 
feels  only  a  mixture  of  repugnance 
and  pity.  When  she  is  accused  of 
witchcraft  she  flies  to  the  belfry 
where  Quasimodo  conceals  her  for  a 
time,  but  she  is  eventually  gibbeted. 
Esmeralda  is  one  of  the  many  imita- 
tions of  Goethe's  Fenella  (q.v.). 


Esmond 


140 


Euphorion 


Esmond,  Beatrix,  in  Thackeray's 
novel,  Henry  Esmond  (1852),  a  bril- 
liant, heartless,  capricious  beauty, 
the  daughter  of  Lady  Castle  wood, 
who  failing  in  her  efforts  to  become 
the  wife  of  a  duke  or  the  mistress  of 
a  king,  marries  her  brother's  tutor, 
for  whom  she  secures  by  intrigue  the 
rank  of  bishop.  "  She  was  imperi- 
ous," we  are  told,  "  she  was  light- 
minded,  she  was  flighty,  she  was 
false.  She  had  no  reverence  for 
character  and  she  was  very,  very 
beautiful."  Yet  she  was  of  the 
earth  earthy.  She  reappears  in  the 
Virginians  (1857)  as  the  aged 
Baroness  de  Bernstein,  her  face  red 
with  rouge  and  redder  with  punch, 
hobbling  about  on  her  tortoise-shell 
cane,  and  making  modest  youths 
and  maidens  blush  for  her  coarseness. 

Thackeray  is  believed  to  have  found  a 

Erototype  for  her,  not  in  real  life,  but  in 
istory.  She  is  a  rifacimento,  so  it  is 
asserted,  of  the  famous  and  infamous 
Elizabeth  Chudleigh,  who  in  George  II's 
day  claimed  to  be  the  Duchess  of  Kingston, 
who  really  was  the  Countess  of  Bristol,  who 
set  British  Parliament  and  people  by  the 
ears  in  the  effort  to  decide  her  pretentions, 
who  was  finally  adjudged  guilty  of  bigamy 
and  escaped  to  Europe,  where  she  filled  the 
Imperial  Court  of  St.  Petersburg  and  the 
Papal  Court  at  Rome  with  the  noise  of  the 
scandals  of  her  later  life.  See  Crocodile, 
Lady. 

Esmond,  Henry,  the  hero  and  the 
feigned  autobiographer  of  the  His- 
tory of  Henry  Esmond,  a  historical 
novel  by  W.  M.  Thackeray  (1852). 

Reputed  to  be  the  illegitimate  son 
of  Thomas  Esmond,  Viscount  of 
Castlewood,  he  is  baptized  Thomas, 
but  in  boyhood  is  taken  to  the  family 
seat  and  renamed  Henry.  His 
father  is  killed  at  the  battle  of  the 
Boyne.  The  Castlewood  estate  and 
titles  pass  to  Francis  Esmond,  by 
whom,  and  by  his  wife  Rachel,  Harry 
is  kindly  treated  and  educated  with 
their  children,  Beatrix  and  Frank. 
Francis  Esrnond,  mortally  wounded 
in  a  duel  with  Lord  Mohan,  on  his 
deathbed  confesses  to  Harry  that  he 
is  really  legitimate  and  the  rightful 
heir.  Harry  keeps  the  confession  to 
himself.  He  plans  to  bring  over  the 
Pretender  in  disguise.    That  volatile 


gentleman  (see  James  Stuart)  falls 
in  love  with  Beatrix  and  forfeits  all 
his  chances  by  an  amatory  escapade. 
The  two  Esmonds  renounce  their 
allegiance,  break  their  swords  in 
James's  presence,  and  return  just 
in  time  to  hear  George  I  proclaimed 
king  of  England.  Beatrix  follows  the 
prince  to  the  continent.  Harry,  who 
had  been  in  love  with  Beatrix,  ends 
by  marrying  her  mother  and  emi- 
grates with  her  to  America. 

Ethelberta,  heroine  of  The  Hand  of 
Ethelberta,  a  novel  (1876)  by  Thomas 
Hardy.  The  daughter  of  Chickerell, 
a  butler,  she  becomes  a  governess  in 
the  home  of  Sir  Ralph  Petherwin; 
elopes  with  and  marries  the  son ;  loses 
husband  and  father-in-law  soon  after- 
ward; and  takes  a  position  as  com- 
panion to  her  mother-in-law.  She 
shocks  Lady  Petherwin  by  publishing 
a  volume  of  poetry  and,  being  cut  off 
in  her  will,  becomes  a  public  enter- 
tainer with  a  shrewd  eye  to  whatever 
may  offer  in  the  matrimonial  way. 
Eventually  she  accepts  Lord  Mount- 
clerc,  an  aristocratic  debauchee, 
whose  wealth  enables  her  to  provide 
for  her  none  too  reputable  brothers 
and  sisters. 

Ettrick  Shepherd,  one  of  the  con- 
versationalists at  the  Nodes  Amhro- 
siancB,  of  which  Christopher  North 
was  the  presiding  genius.  He  is  easily 
recognizable  as  James  Hogg. 

Euphorion,  in  Goethe's  Faust  (Part 
II,  Act  iii),  the  result  of  the  union 
between  Faust  and  the  Greek  Helena, 
summoned  up  by  magic  arts  from  the 
shades.  He  is  a  beautiful  boy,  repre- 
senting modem  poetry,  with  Byron  as 
the  concrete  personality  in  whose 
traits  the  abstract  idea  ^  has  been 
clothed.  A  wild,  free,  aspiring  child, 
Euphorion  throws  himself  singing 
from  a  rock,  expecting  to  fly,  and  falls 
dead  at  his  parents'  feet.  From  the 
abode  of  shades  his  spirit  calls  to  his 
mother  and  draws  her  after  him. 

Euphorion,  the  winged  son  of  Faust  and 
Helen,  ...  is  the  genius  of  modern 
poetry  in  its  most  finished  form,  romantic 
passion  clad  in  the  perfection  of  classical 
beauty.  With  the  lyre  in  his  hand  he  rises 
singing  from  the  earth  and  the  parents,  full 
of  anxiety  and  delight,  listen  to  the  strange, 


Euphrasia 


141 


Euphues 


full-sounding,  heart-moving  tones  of  his 
voice.  It  is  well  known  that  Goethe  in- 
tended in  this  wilful  and  wanton  sprite  to 
commemorate  the  life  of  Byron,  the  poet 
whom,  among  moderns,  he  admired  and 
valued  above  all  others. — H.  H.  Boyesen: 
Goethe  and  Schiller,  p.  264. 

Euphrasia,  In  Arthur  Murphy's 
tragedy,  The  Grecian  Daughter  (1772), 
saves  from  starvation  her  aged  father 
Evander,  King  of  Syracuse,  when  he 
was  dethroned  by  Dionysius  the 
Younger  and  confined  in  a  rocky 
dungeon,  by  nourishing  him  with 
milk  from  her  own  breast.  In  his 
baffled  rage  Dionysius  would  have 
put  Evander  to  death  but  Euphrasia 
stabbed  the  tyrant  to  the  heart. 
Murphy  invented  his  history  for  the 
occasion.  The  tale  was  originally 
told  by  Valerius  Maximus  {De  Pietate 
in  Parentis,  v.  4)  of  a  young  Roman 
matron  who  in  this  fashion  nourished 
her  imprisoned  mother.  Festus,  a 
later  writer,  changed  the  mother  into 
the  father,  and  Murphy,  accepting 
Festus's  version,  laid  the  scene  in 
ancient  Syracuse  and  altered  names 
and  circumstances  to  suit  himself. 
There  was,  however,  a  Grecian 
daughter  Xantippe,  who  so  preserved 
the  life  of  her  father  Cimonos  when 
he  was  imprisoned  in  a  dungeon  in 
Rome,  on  the  site  of  the  church  of 
St.  Nicholas  in  Carcere.  Byron  vis- 
ited the  dungeon  and  describes  it  in 
Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage  (iv,  148): 

There  is  a  dungeon  in  whose  dim  drear  light 

What  do  I  gaze  on? 

An  old  man,  and  a  female  young  and  fair 

Fresh  as  a  nursing  mother  in  whose  veins 

The  blood  is  nectar. 

Here  youth  offers  to  old  age  the  food 

The  milk  of  his  own  gift  ...   It  is  her  sire 

To  whom  she  renders  back  the  debt  of  blood. 

Euphrasia,  heroine  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher's  drama,  Philaster  or 
Love  Lies  Bleeding  (1608),  whose  love 
for  the  hero  leads  her  to  don  male 
apparel  and  enter  his  service.  She 
unintentionally  excites  his  mad  jeal- 
ousy by  attracting  the  love  of  the 
Princess  Arethusa,  but  all  comes  right 
when  her  true  sex  is  revealed. 

Euphrasia'^  passion  is  a  child's  wholly 
Imaginative  worship  springing  from  a  child's 
inreconoeived  ideal  of  the  manhood  she  sees 


embodied  in  visible  shape  by  the  hero  of  her 
visions.  Her  passion  asks  for  and  wins  no 
recompense  of  love,  demands  no  response, 
claims  nothing  save  the  inalienable  right  to 
give,  and  throughout  no  jarring  note  of  pre- 
mature womanhood  taints  the  freshness  and 
freedom  of  the  image,  and  no  words  in  all 
the  play  ring  truer  than  her  own  appraise- 
ment of  the  life  she  is  eager  to  surrender: 

'Tis  not  a  life, 
'Tis  but  a  piece  of  childhood  thrown  away. 

Euphues,  hero  of  two  romances  by 
John  Lyly:  Euphues,  or  the  Anatomy 
of  Wit  (1581),  and  Euphues  and  his 
England  (1582).  The  name  is  derived 
from  Roger  Ascham,  who  in  his 
Schoolmaster  (1570)  had  enumerated 
among  the  essential  qualities  of  a 
child  that  which  Socrates  had  called 
Efi^/ie^,  or  personal  attractiveness  of 
mind  and  body.  Euphues,  a  native 
of  Athens,  goes  to  Naples  and  there 
wooes  Lucilla,  daughter  of  the  gover- 
nor, who  is  already  pledged  to  his 
friend  Philautus.  The  friends  quarrel 
and  exchange  long  letters  full  of  ex- 
travagant conceits,  but  when  Lucilla 
jilts  Euphues  for  a  third  lover  they 
are  reconciled  and  join  in  bewailing 
the  inconstancy  of  woman.  Euphues 
returns  to  Athens  and  writes  long 
letters  to  his  friends  on  education 
and  religion.  These  constitute  the 
bulk  of  the  book,  and  it  was  for  their 
sake  that  it  was  written.  The  work 
is  far  more  serious  and  earnest  than 
is  generally  supposed.  Charles  Kings- 
ley  calls  it  "as  brave,  righteous  and 
pious  a  book  as  any  man  need  desire 
to  look  into;  "  but  it  is  full  of  the 
verbal  affectations,  quaint  conceits 
and  painful  elaboration  of  style, 
which,  though  common  enough  in  the 
court  circles  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  were 
first  given  literary  form  in  this  book, 
and  hence  gained  the  name  of 
"  Euphuism."  The  book  was  held  ^ 
in  high  estimation  by  most  of  Lily's 
contemporaries,  and  was  extensively 
imitated.  Euphuism  became  the 
rage.  Shakespeare,  however,  ridi- 
culed it  in  the  character  of  Armado 
in  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  as  did  Ben 
Jonson  in  Fastidious  in  Every  Man 
out  of  His  Humor.  The  character 
of    Sir    Percie    Shafton,    in    Scott's 


Eusebio 


142 


Evadne 


Monastery,  is  a  not  very  successful 
attempt  to  recreate  a  Euphuist  who 
had  modeled  his  conversation  upon 
Lyly's  romance. 

In  Euphues  and  His  England 
Euphues  and  Philautus  visit  England, 
to  mingle  in  friendly  intercourse  with 
its  inhabitants,  especially  the  female 
part  thereof,  with  whom  they  never 
tire  of  holding  long,  conceited  dia- 
logues and  exchanging  long,  con- 
ceited letters.  A  lady  named  Camilla, 
especially,  attracts  Philautus,  but 
though  she  esteems  him  as  a  friend, 
as  a  conversationalist  and  as  a  cor- 
respondent, she  does  not  love  him, 
and  he  is  finally  led  by  a  prudent 
matron,  named  Flavia,  to  the  posses- 
sion of  a  wife  in  the  young  lady 
Violet. 

Eusebio,  hero  of  The  Devotion  to 
the  Cross  (Spanish,  La  Devocion  de  la 
Cruz,  1634)  a  drama  by  Pedro  Cal- 
deron  de  la  Barca,  the  greatest  of  all 
the  Spanish  dramatists.  Eusebio, 
after  various  disorders,  takes  to  the 
mountains,  becomes  a  robber,  a  mur- 
derer and  a  ravisher,  but  never  amid 
all  his  crimes  has  renounced  his 
devotion  to  the  cross,  nor  his  con- 
fidence that  in  the  end  he  must  be 
saved  by  this  devotion.  And,  indeed, 
when  the  end  comes,  he  finds  his 
confidence  has  not  been  misplaced. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  Eusebios 
belong  merely  to  the  region  of  imagination. 
Fowell  Buxton  (Memoirs,  1848,  p.  488) 
visited,  in  the  prisons  of  Civita  Vecchia,  a 
famous  Italian  bandit,  Gasparoni,  who 
having  committed  two  hundred  murders, 
had  never  yet  committed  one  upon  a  Friday. 
— R.  C.  Trench,  The  Genius  of  Calderon, 
p.  67. 

Eustace,  Lady  Elizabeth,  heroine  of 
Anthony  Trollope's  novel.  The  Eus- 
tace Diamonds  (1873),  an  opulent  and 
aristocratic  lady  of  the  BecLy  Sharp 
type. 

The  Eustace  Diamonds  achieved  the  suc- 
cess which  it  certainly  did  attain,  not  as  a 
love  story,  but  as  a  record  of  a  cunning  little 
woman  of  pseudo  fashion,  to  whom  in  her 
cunning  there  came  a  series  of  adventures, 
unpleasant  enough  in  themselves,  but 
pleasant  to  the  reader.  As  I  wrote  the  book, 
the  idea  constantly  presented  itself  to  me 
that  Lizzie  Eustace  was  but  a  second  Becky 
Sharp;  but  in  planning  the  character  I  had 


not  thought  of  this,  and  I  believe  that  Lizzie 
would  have  been  just  as  she  is  though  Becky 
Sharp  had  never  been  described. — Anthony 
Trollope:    An  Autobiography,  p.  298. 

Eva,  Little,  in  Mrs.  H.  B.  Stowe's 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  the  daughter  of 
Tom's  owner,  St.  Clare,  and  the  mis- 
tress and  friend  of  Topsy,  the  colored 
girl.  Her  early  death  is  probably  a  re- 
miniscence of  "Little  Nell"  Trent's 
in  Dickens's  Old  Curiosity  Shop. 

Evadne,  the  principal  character 
though  not  the  titular  heroine  of  The 
Maid's  Tragedy  (1619),  by  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher.  Sister  of  Melantius, 
general  of  the  army  of  Rhodes,  she 
has  been  seduced  by  the  king.  To 
conceal  the  amour  the  culprits  agree 
that  she  must  marry  some  one  who 
shall  be  a  husband  only  in  name. 
Amintor  is  the  king's  choice.  Though 
already  engaged  to  Aspatia  {q,v.) 
friendship  to  Melantius  and  loyalty 
to  his  monarch  forbid  his  refusal.  On 
the  wedding  night  Evadne  reveals  the 
shameful  truth.  Amintor,  in  horror, 
appeals  to  Melantius,  who  over- 
whelms his  sister  with  reproaches  and 
wrings  from  her  a  promise  to  kill  the 
king,  which  is  promptly  fulfilled. 
Meanwhile  Aspatia,  assuming  male 
apparel,  seeks  her  recreant  lover, 
picks  a  quarrel  with  him,  throws  her- 
self _  upon  his  sword  and  expires. 
Amintor  then  runs  the  sword  through 
his  own  body  and  Evadne,  recogniz- 
ing herself  as  the  cause  of  all  these 
calamities,  stabs  herself. 

The  character  of  Evadne — her  naked, 
unblushing  impudence,  the  mixture  of  folly 
with  vice,  her  utter  insensibility  to  any 
motive  but  her  own  pride  and  inclination, 
her  heroic  superiority  to  any  signs  of.  shame 
or  scruples  of  conscience  from  a  recollection 
of  what  is  due  to  herself  or  others,  are  well 
described. — Hazlitt. 

Evadne,  titular  heroine  of  a  trag- 
edy, Evadne,  or  the  Statue  (1819),  by 
Richard  Lalor  Shiel,  who  aclmowl- 
edges  some  indebtedness  to  The 
Traitor. 

Sister  to  Colonna,  a  Neapolitan 
noble,  in  love  with  and  beloved  by 
Vicentio,  she  is  the  object  of  dis- 
honorable advances  from  the  King  of 
Naples,  who  desists  after  she  has 
drawn  his  attention  to  the  statue  of 


Evander 


143 


Eyre 


her  father  by  whom  his  life  had  once 
been  saved.  Concealed  behind  this 
same  statue  the  king  overhears  the 
confession  of  another  plot  against  his 
life  and  throne  by  his  favorite  Ludo- 
vico.  The  latter  is  killed  by  Colonna 
and  Evadne  is  imited  to  her  lover. 

Evander,  in  Arthur  Murphy's 
tragedy,  The  Grecian  Daughter  (1772), 
the  father  of  Euphrasia  (q.v.).  Mur- 
phy, in  defiance  of  history,  makes  him 
King  of  Syracuse,  who  had  dethroned 
Dionysius  the  Elder  and  was  in  his 
turn  dethroned  and  imprisoned  by 
Dionysius  the  Younger. 

Evangeline,  titular  heroine  of  a 
poem  (1849)  by  Longfellow,  founded 
on  the  expulsion  of  the  Acadians  from 
Nova  Scotia  (see  Acadia).  Evan- 
geline Belief ontaine  and  her  lover, 
Gabriel  Lajeunesse  (q.v.),  are  sepa- 
rated during  the  exodus.  She  traces 
him  from  Louisiana  to  the  west  and 
then  back  again  to  the  east,  always 
just  failing  to  meet  him.  At  last, 
after  she  herself  has  become  a  Sister 
of  Mercy  in  Philadelphia,  she  finds 
him  dying  in  a  hospital  of  the  plague. 

Evans,  Sir  Hugh,  in  Shakespeare's 
comedy,  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor, 
&  Welsh  parson  (the  title  is  one  which 
in  Elizabethan  days  was  given  to 
clergjmien.) 

An  excellent  character  In  all  respects. 
He  is  as  respectable  as  he  is  laughable.  He 
has  "very  good  discretions,  and  very  odd 
humours."  The  duel  scene  with  Caius 
gives  him  an  opportunity  to  shew  his 
"cholers  and  his  tremblings  of  mind,"  his 
valour  and  his  melancholy,  in  an  irresistible 
manner.  In  the  dialogue,  which  at  his 
mother's  request  he  holds  with  his  pupil, 
William  Page,  to  shew  his  progress  in 
learning,  it  is  hard  to  say  whether  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  master  or  the  scholar  is  the 
greatest. — Hazlitt:  Characters  of  Shake- 
speare's Plays. 

Evelina,  heroine  of  a  novel  by 
Madame  D'Arblay  entitled  Evelina, 
or  a  Young  Lady's  Entrance  into  the 
World.    See  Aveling,  Evelina. 

Everdene,  Bathsheba,  heroine  of 
Thomas  Hardy's  novel.  Far  from  the 
Madding  Crowd.  She  inherits  a  farm 
from  her  uncle  and  being  generously 
equipped,  both  bodily  and  mentally, 
carries  it  on  with  the  assistance  of  a 
bailiflF.     She  might  have  married  a 


neighboring  farmer,  William  Bold- 
wood,  but  is  fascinated  by  the  showy 
accomplishments  of  Sergeant  Troy 
whom  after  marriage  she  turns  adrift 
as  a  ne'er-do-well.  He  is  reported 
drowned.  Again  Bathsheba  would 
have  married  Boldwood  but  Troy 
reappears,  as  insolent  and  impudent 
as  ever,  and  she  shoots  him.  Con- 
demned to  death,  her  sentence  is 
commuted  to  penal  servitude  for  life. 
Gabriel  Oak,  who  had  risen  on  her 
estate  from  shepherd  to  bailiff,  renews 
his  old-time  attentions  and  ends  by 
marrying  her. 

She  is  a  rustic  beauty  fond  of  admiration, 
loving  her  independence,  without  much 
heart  but  with  a  brave  spirit,  a  sharp  hand 
at  a  bargain,  an  arrant  flirt  overflowing 
with  vanity,  but  modest  withal.  "As  a 
girl,  had  she  been  put  into  a  low  dress,  she 
would  have  run  and  thrust  her  head  into 
a  bush;  yet  she  was  not  a  shy  girl  by  any 
means.  It  was  merely  her  instinct  to  draw 
the  line  dividing  the  seen  from  the  unseen 
higher  than  they  do  in  towns."  "She  has 
her  faults,"  says  Oak  to  the  toll-keeper, 
after  his  first  meeting  with  her,  "and  the 
greatest  of  them  is — well,  what  it  is  always 
— vanity."  "I  want  somebody  to  tame 
me,"  she  says  herself;  "I'm  too  indepen- 
dent." Oak  is  not  the  man  to  perform  so 
diflScult  an  achievement.  He  has  too  many 
Christian  characteristics  and  too  limited  a 
power  of  utterance  to  succeed  with  Bath- 
sheba.— Saturday  Review. 

Every  Man,  a  sort  of  synopsis  of 
human  life  and  character,  a  repre- 
sentative of  all  humanity,  titular  hero 
of  an  anonymous  "  morall  playe " 
probably  of  the  time  of  Edward  IV, 
whose  sub-title  runs  as  follows:  "  A 
Treatise,  how  the  hye  Fader  of 
Heven  sendeth  Dethe  to  somon  every 
creature  to  come  and  gyve  a  counte 
of  theyr  lyves  in  this  Worlde." 

Eyre,  Jane,  heroine  of  a  novel  of 
that  name  by  Charlotte  Brontfi 
(1847),  a  stiff  little  Puritanical  gov- 
erness, homely,  shy  and  reserved,  but 
inwardly  shaken  with  emotions  and 
passions  that  cry  for  an  outlet. 
Charlotte  Bronte  undoubtedly  drew 
to  some  extent  on  herself  for  this 
portrait,  and  to  that  extent  Jane  Eyre 
is  the  outlet  she  needed. 

George  Henry  Lewes  (not  a  person 
of  the  finest  fibre)  said  of  Jane  Eyre 
that  the  grand  secret  of  its  success, 
as  of  all  great  and  lasting  successes, 


Ezzelin 


144 


Fagin 


was  its  reality:  "  In  spite  of  crudi- 
ties, absurdities,  impossibilities,  it 
remains  most  singularly  and  start- 
lingly  alive.  In  Jane  Eyre  Charlotte 
Bronte  comes  for  the  first  time  into 
her  kingdom  of  the  inner  life.  She 
grasps  the  secret,  unseen  springs;  in 
her  narrow  range  she  is  master  of  the 
psychology  of  passion  and  of  suffer- 
ing, whether  she  is  describing  the 
agony  of  the  child  Jane,  shut  up  in 
that  terrible  red  room,  or  the  anguish 
of  the  woman  on  the  morning  of  that 
wedding  day  that  brought  no  wed- 
ding." 


Ezzelin,  Sir,  in  Byron's  poem,  Lara 
(1814),  a  "  stern  stranger  "  who  recog- 
nizes Lara  at  the  table  of  Lord  Otho, 
but,  ere  he  distinctly  formulates  his 
charge,  accepts  the  proposal  made  by 
Otho  that  the  matter  shall  be  decided 
by  a  duel.  At  the  appointed  time 
Lara  appears  but  Ezzelin  is  never 
heard  of  more.  It  is  dimly  hinted,  how- 
ever, that  on  the  fatal  eve  a  serf  had 
seen  a  huntsman  cast  a  dead  body  into 
the  river  dividing  Lara's  lands  from 
Otho's  and  that  a  star  of  knighthood 
blazed  upon  the  corpse's  body.  The 
reader  is  left  to  his  own  conclusions. 


Fadden,  Chimmie  {i.e.,  Jimmie), 
the  hero  of  various  stories  and 
sketches  by  Edward  M.  Town  send 
and  also  of  a  drama.  He  was  a  direct 
study  from  life,  the  original  being  one 
Patrick  O'Connell,  better  known  as 
"  Chuck  Conners  "  (1852-1913),  who, 
because  of  his  familiarity  with  the 
Chinese  quarter  in  New  York  and  his 
influence  over  its  denizens,  was  often 
called  "  The  White  Mayor  of  China- 
town." 

It  was  his  inimitable  Bowery  speech 
which  made  Chuck  so  popular.  He  became 
a  celebrity  because  of  his  quaint  philosophy 
delivered  in  the  Bowery  dialect.  His  saloon 
became  a  place  for  every  slum  visitor  to  see, 
and  they  would  stand  and  wait  for  some  of 
the  wisdom  of  the  east  side  to  drop  from  his 
lips  in  his  own  vernacular.  Chuck  did  not 
hesitate  to  take  advantage  of  this,  and 
capitalized  it  for  all  it  was  worth.  It  was 
Conner's  wife  who  wrote  his  book,  Bowery 
Life,  which  had  quite  an  extensive  sale. 

All  over  the  country  Americans  who 
have  made  trips  through  New  York's  China- 
town will  discuss  Chuck  Conners  to-day. 
Few  of  those  who  visited  the  place  failed  to 
see  him.  Many  of  them  were  in  the  parties 
he  guided  through  the  mysterious  under- 
ground passages  and  dark  ways  of  that 
quarter. — N.  Y.  Globe,  May  10,  1913. 

Fadladeen,  in  Moore's  Lalla  Rhook 
(18 1 7),  the  chamberlain  of  Aureng- 
zebe's  harem,  appointed  to  escort 
L^Ia  Rhook  from  Delhi  to  Cashmere. 
"  A  judge  of  everything  from  the 
pencilling  of  a  Circassian's  eyelids  to 
the  deepest  questions  of  science  and 
literature,"  he  is  severely  critical  of 
the  tales  recited  by  a  minstrel  in  the 


lady's  train  and  correspondingly 
chagrined  when  the  poet  turns  out  to 
be  her  affianced  bridegroom  and  his 
future  master.  The  portrait  was 
recognizably  drawn  from  Francis 
Jeffrey,  whose  "  sententious  smart- 
ness "  is  cleverly  imitated.  Fadla- 
deen's  remorse  and  contrition  at  his 
mistake  is  thought  to  have  been  sug- 
gested by  the  change  which  came  over 
the  mood  of  the  Edinburgh  Review 
when  it  discovered  that  Byron  was  a 
Whig.  Hence  it  is  amusing  to  find 
in  Jeffrey's  review  of  Lalla  Rhook  an 
allusion  to 

the  omniscient  Fadladeen,  the  magnificent 
and  most  infallible  grand  chamberlain  of 
the  Haram  (sic) — whose  sayings  and  re- 
marks, we  cannot  help  observing,  do  not 
agree  very  well  with  the  character  which  is 
assigned  to  him — being  for  the  most  part 
very  smart,  sententious  and  acute,  and  by 
no  means  solemn,  stupid  and  pompous,  as 
was  to  have  been  expected." — -F.  Jeffrey: 
Essays,  p.  449. 

Fag,  in  Sheridan's  comedy  of  The 
Rivals,  a  lying  servant  to  Captain 
Absolute,  who  "  wears  his  master's 
wit  as  he  does  his  lace,  at  second- 
hand." 

I  am  quite  conscious  of  my  own  Immuni- 
ties as  a  tale-teller.  But  even  the  menda- 
cious Mr.  Fag  .  .  .  assures  us:  that, 
though  he  never  scruples  to  tell  a  lie  at  his 
master's  command,  yet  it  hurts  his  con- 
science to  be  found  out. — Sir  W.  Scott. 

Fagin,  In  Dickens's  novel,  Oliver 
Twist,  a  fawning,  crafty  old  Jew,  a 
receiver  of  stolen  goods,  employing  a 


Falrchild 


145 


Faliero 


number  of  confederates,  chiefly  boys, 
whom  he  trains  up  as  pickpockets  and 
petty  thieves.  After  a  long  life  of 
crime  he  is  sentenced  to  death  for  com- 
plicity in  the  murder  of  Nancy  Sikes. 

It  was  eighteen  years  since  Ivanhoe  had 
appeared,  and  what  a  contrast  between  its 
Jewish  personage  and  the  character  in  this 
the  next  work  of  a  great  English  writer  in 
which  a  Jew  plays  a  prominent  r61el  In  the 
one  the  charm,  in  the  other  the  disgrace 
of  the  work;  in  the  one  the  possessor  of  all 
human  virtues,  in  the  other  of  all  human 
vices;  the  one  a  plea  for  kindness  toward  a 
community  at  that  time  still  unrecognized 
as  worthy  of  the  rights  of  men  and  women, 
the  other  calculated  to  reawaken  all  the  old 
thoughts  if  ever  they  had  died  out,  of  the 
baseness  and  wickedness  of  the  Jews. — 
David  PhiLipson:  The  Jew  in  English 
Fiction,  p.  89. 

Fairchild  Family,  an  interesting 
group  described  by  Mrs.  Sherwood  in 
The  History  of  the  Fairchild  Family, 
or  the  Child's  Manual  (18 18),  which 
enjoyed  a  vast  popularity  with  several 
generations  of  child  readers.  A  new 
edition  was  called  for  in  1889. 

The  family  consisted  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Fairchild,  their  three  children, 
and  two  servants,  John  and  Betty. 
They  lived  in  the  country,  and  it  does 
not  appear  that  Mr.  Fairchild  had 
any  particular  occupation,  except 
being  oppressively  good.  A  sort  of 
married  Mr.  Barlow,  without  his  fund 
of  general  information,  he  never  lost 
an  opportunity  of  giving  a  religious 
turn  to  the  conversation. 

Mrs.  Fairchild  was  as  solemn  and 
instructive  as  her  husband,  though 
she  was  a  lady  with  a  past.  There 
had  been  a  time,  as  she  informed  her 
children,  when  "  if  she  could  but 
escape  punishment,  she  did  not  care 
what  naughty  things  she  did."  In 
these  unregenerate  days,  she  would 
pinch  Shock,  her  aunt's  lap-dog,  or 
pull  his  tail  and  she  also  "  used  the 
cat  ill."  As  might  be  expected  the 
children  were  prodigies  of  precocious 
piety. 

Fairfax,  Jane,  in  Jane  Austen's 
novel,  Emma,  a  gentle,  patient  girl, 
an  anticipation  of  Anne  Elliot  in 
Persuasion. 

Fairford,  Alan,  in  Scott's  Redgaunt- 
let  (1824),  a  young  Scotch  solicitor, 
son  of  Alexander  or  Saunders  Fair- 


ford,  and  the  devoted  friend  of  the 
hero,  Darsie  Latimer,  whose  sister 
he  marries.  According  to  Lockhart, 
Scott  drew  his  own  portrait  in  this 
character. 

Faithful,  in  Bunyan's  prose  alle- 
gory, The  Pilgrim's  Progress  (1678), 
a  companion  of  Christian  on  a  part 
of  his  journey  toward  the  Celestial 
City  ^  At  Vanity  Fair  both  pilgrims 
are  seized.  Faithful  is  condemned  by 
Justice  Hategood  to  be  burned  alive. 
His  soul  is  taken  to  heaven  in  a 
chariot  of  fire. 

Faithful  Jacob,  hero  of  a  sea-tale  by 
Captain  Frederick  Maryatt — Jacob 
Faithful,  or  the  Adventures  of  a  Water- 
man (1835).  Born  on  a  Thames 
lighter,  Jacob,  up  to  the  age  of  eleven, 
has  never  set  foot  on  shore.  The 
craft  is  manned  by  his  father,  mother 
and  himself.  One  of  his  first  acts,  on 
beginning  life  ashore,  is  to  sell  his 
mother's  asses  for  £20.  At  fourteen 
he  is  bound  apprentice  to  a  waterman, 
when  his  real  adventures  begin. 

Fakredeen,  in  Disraeli's  Tancred, 
a  young  emir  who  is  always  head  over 
heels  in  debt  but  finds  a  certain  joy 
in  the  fact.  "  Fakredeen,"  says  the 
author,  "  was  fond  of  his  debts;  they 
were  the  source,  indeed,  of  his  only 
real  excitement,  and  he  was  grateful 
to  them  for  their  stirring  powers." 
In  this  respect  he  resembled  young 
Disraeli; — nor  in  this  respect  alone: 

There  is  in  the  emir's  political  character 
the  most  curious  mixture  of  lofty  aims  and 
ambiguous  conduct,  of  faith  in  an  idea  and 
faith  in  intrigue;  and  this  is  characteristic 
of  Disraeli  himself  when  he  is  about  to 
throw  himself  into  active  political  life. — 

GeORGE    BrANDER. 

Faliero,  Marino,  the  forty-ninth 
Doge  of  Venice,  elected  1354,  is  the 
hero  of  two  great  tragedies  named 
after  him,  one  by  Byron  (18 19),  the 
second  by  Casimir  Delavigne  (1829). 
When  75  years  of  age  he  married 
Angiolina,  a  young  beauty.  Soon 
after  the  union  a  giddy  young  noble- 
man, Michel  Steno,  whom  he  had 
had  occasion  to  rebuke  _  in  public, 
stuck  up  some  indecent  lines  on  the 
chair  of  state  purporting  that  the 
Doge  kept  a  young  wife  for  the  bene- 


Falkland 


146 


Fanny 


fit  of  others  The  Senate  condemned 
Steno  to  a  month's  imprisonment; 
whereupon  the  Doge,  incensed  at  the 
inadequacy  of  the  sentence,  joined  in 
a  plot  against  the  republic.  Betrayed 
by  Bertram,  a  fellow  conspirator,  the 
Doge  was  beheaded  on  the  Giant's 
Staircase. 

Falkland,  the  real  hero  of  William 
Godwin's  novel,  Caleb  Williams 
(1794).  A  proud  aristocrat,  jealous 
of  his  good  name  and  that  of  his 
family,  he  is  goaded  by  intolerable 
insult  to  murder  a  dangerous  enemy, 
Tyrrel.  Two  innocent  men  suffer  for 
the  crime.  Falkland,  tearful  of  dis- 
grace more  than  death,  remains 
silent.  Finding  that  his  secret  is 
known  to  his  secretary,  Caleb  Wil- 
liams, he  makes  him  swear  never  to 
reveal  it,  threatening  terrible  penal- 
ties if  the  oath  be  broken.  "  I  am," 
he  warns  his  dependant,  "  as  much 
the  fool  of  fame  as  ever;  I  cling  to  it 
as  my  last  breath;  though  I  be  the 
blackest  of  villains,  I  will  leave  behind 
me  a  spotless  and  illustrious  name; 
there  is  no  crime  so  malignant,  no 
scene  of  blood  so  horrible,  in  which 
that  object  cannot  engage  me." 
Finally  the  truth  comes  out,  and 
Falkland  dies  of  shame  and  a  broken 
heart.    See  Williams.  Caleb. 

Falstaff,  Sir  John,  figures  in  I  and 
II  Henry  IV  (1588),  and  in  The 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  (1596).  The 
epilogue  to  JI  Henry  IV  promises 
that  "  our  author  will  continue  the 
story  with  Sir  John  in  it  "  but  Shake- 
speare obviously  changed  his  mind, 
for  the  fat  knight  does  not  appear  in 
the  next  play  of  the  series,  Henry  V, 
though  his  death  is  announced  by 
Dall  Tearsheet  in  a  famous  passage 
(II,  ili).  He  makes  his  appearance, 
outside  of  the  Shakespearean  cycle, 
in  operas  by  Balfe,  Verdi  and  Nicolai, 
and  also  in  a  comedy  by  William 
Kenrick  (1766)  entitled  Falstafs 
Wedding,  A  Sequel  to  the  2nd  part  of 
Henry  IV,  The  latter,  intended 
originally  for  publication  in  book 
form  alone,  was  remodelled  by  the 
author  for  the  stage  and  performed, 
April  12,  1766,  for  the  benefit  of  Love, 
who  took  the  titular  r61e.    See  also 


Fastolfe,     Sir    John,    and    Old- 
castle,  Sir  John. 

Perhaps  the  most  substantial  comic  char- 
acter that  ever  was  invented.  Sir  John 
carries  a  most  portly  presence  in  the  mind's 
eye  and  in  him,  not  to  speak  it  profanely, 
"we  behold  the  fulness  of  the  spirit  of  wit 
and  humor  bodily."  We  are  as  well  ac- 
quainted with  his  person  as  his  mind,  and 
his  jokes  come  upon  us  with  double  force 
and  relish  from  the  quantity  of  flesh  through 
which  they  make  their  way,  as  he  shakes 
his  fat  sides  with  laughter,  or  "lards  the 
lean  earth  as  he  walks  along."  .  .  . 
Falstafif's  wit  is  an  emanation  of  a  fine  con- 
stitution; an  exuberance  of  good-humor  and 
good-nature;  an  over-flowing  of  his  love  of 
laughter  and  good  fellowship;  a  giving  vent 
to  his  heart's  ease,  and  over-contentment 
with  himself  and  others. — William  Haz- 
litt:    Characters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays. 

He  is  a  man  at  once  young  and  old,  enter- 
prising and  fat,  a  dupe  and  a  wit,  harmless 
and  wicked,  weak  in  principle  and  resolute 
by  constitution,  cowardly  in  appearance  and 
brave  in  reality,  a  knave  without  malice,  a 
liar  without  deceit,  and  a  knight,  a  gentle- 
man and  a  soldier  without  either  dignity, 
decency,  or  honor. — Maurice  Morgann: 
On  the  Dramatic  Character  of  Sir  John  Pol- 
staff  (1777). 

That  Queen  Bess  should  have  desired  to 
Bee  Falstaff  making  love  proves  her  to  have 
been,  as  indeed  she  was,  a  gross-minded  old 
baggage.  Shakespeare  has  evaded  the  diffi- 
culty with  great  skill.  He  knew  that  Fal- 
staflf  could  not  be  in  love;  and  has  mixed  but 
a  little,  a  very  little,  Pruritis  with  his  fortune- 
hunting  courtship.  But  the  Falstaff  of  the 
Merry  Wives  is  not  the  Falstaff  of  Henry  IV. 
It  Is  a  big-bellied  impostor,  assuming  his 
name  and  style,  or,  at  best,  it  is  Falstaff  in 
dotage. — Hartley  Coleridge:  Essays  and 
Marginalia. 

Fang,  a  sheriff's  officer  in  the 
second  part  of  Shakespeare's  King 
Henry  IV, 

Fang,  Mr.,  the  justice  in  Dickens's 
novel  of  Oliver  Twist;  intended,  it  is 
said,  for  a  Mr.  Laing,  "  a  coarse 
magistrate,"  who  "  felt,"  we  are  told, 
"  the  power  of  the  novelist,  and  was 
glad  to  resign." 

Fanny,  heroine  of  a  poetical  satire 
of  that  name  (18 19)  by  Fitz  Greene 
Halleck.  The  daughter  of  a  "cod- 
fish aristocrat,"  she  and  her  father 
make  a  temporary  splurge  in  New 
York  City  and  then  subside  into 
poverty  and  obscurity. 

There  is  no  story  In  Fanny  or  none  to 
speak  of,  and  the  most  that  we  can  say  of  it 
is  that  it  is  an  imaginary  sketch  of  the 
social  experiences  of  its  heroine,  the  daugh- 


Fantine 


147 


Fashion 


ter  of  a  shopkeeper  in  Chatham  Street,  who, 
having  amassed  what  was  then  considered 
a  comfortable  little  fortune,  proceeded  to 
make  a  brilliant,  brief  splurge  in  society  and 
concluded  his  career  by  going  where  the 
woodbine  twineth.  What  the  subject- 
matter  of  such  a  poem  as  Fanny  could  be  in 
the  hands  of  a  true  poet  was  shown  at  a 
later  period  by  Thomas  Hood  in  Miss  Kil- 
mansegg. — R.  H.  Stoddard:  LipPincoU's 
Magazine,  XLIII,  p.  892. 

Fantine,  the  chief  female  character 
in  Victor  Hugo's  Les  Miserahles 
(1862),  enforcing  his  favorite  moral 
of  the  possible  redemption  of  fallen 
womanhood  through  the  reawakening 
of  its  better  impulses.  She  is  intro- 
duced in  Book  iii  (named  after  her) 
in  a  characteristic  setting  of  students 
celebrating  a  holiday  with  the  gri- 
settes  as  their  companions.  Nemesis 
follows  in  desertion,  shame,  poverty, 
and  the  struggle  between  womanly 
pride  and  maternal  love.  The  origi- 
nally pure,  confiding  and  beautiful 
girl  degenerates  into  a  jealous,  reck- 
less, abandoned  woman,  redeemed 
only  by  the  love  of  little  Cosette. 
Then,  when  society  has  consummated 
its  monstrous  wrong,  M.  Madeleine 
(see  Valjean,  Jean)  appears  as  a 
sort  of  deus  ex  machina;  lus  pity  pene- 
trates the  heart  which  agony  ^  and 
despair  had  deadened;  another  victim 
is  snatched  from  the  moral  death 
which  (we  are  shown)  is  the  penalty 
of  misfortune  rather  than  wickedness. 

Take  the  pathetic  story  of  Fantine,  for 
instance,  which  forms  but  a  fragment  of  the 
whole  book;  Hugo  here  takes  the  coldest 
reader  deep  into  misery.  He  knows  better 
than  any  writer  of  the  time  how  to  excite 
physical  horror,  and  it  is  in  general  to  his 
ability  to  excite  sympathetical  physical  sen- 
sations that  nine-tenths  of  his  success  is  due. 
In  the  case  before  us  our  blood  runs  cold  at 
the  description  of  the  poor  girl's  sufferings: 
she  sells  her  hair  for  money,  she  sells  her 
teeth,  and  finally  herself,  and  it  is  perhaps 
as  grim  a  picture  as  even  Hugo  has  drawn, 
that  is  made  of  it  all.  He  is  as  pitiless  as 
fate  or  as  a  newspaper  reporter:  he  spares 
us  none  of  the  tragedy.— T.  S.  Perry. 

Fardarougha,  in  Fardarougha,  the 
Miser,  or  the  Convicts  of  Lisnamond, 
an  Irish  novel  by  William  Carleton, 
a  miser  whose  generous  instincts  are 
still  dormant  imder  a  layer  of  avarice 
and  greed. 

Farintosh,  Marquis  of,  in  Thack- 
eray's novel,  The  Newcomes,  a  young 


English  nobleman  of  great  wealth, 
good  looks,  distinguished  ancestry, 
and  meagre  intelligence;  spoiled  by 
flattery  from  his  cradle  and  launched 
upon  society  as  a  full-blown  egotist 
and  coxcomb.  Believing  that  every 
daughter  of  Eve  was  bent  upon  mar- 
rying him,  he  is  not  merely  pained, 
but  shocked  and  astonished  when 
Ethel  Newcome  throws  him  over  be- 
cause of  his  past.  M.  B.  Field  in  his 
Memories,  p.  132,  says  Thackeray  told 
him  that  the  original  of  this  character 
was  the  Marquis  of  Bath. 

Farrell,  Aminta,  heroine  of  George 
Meredith's  novel,  Lord  Ormont  and 
his  Aminta  (1894).  She  makes  a 
secret  marriage  with  his  lordship,  a 
sulky  Achilles  of  an  Englishman, 
rebels  against  his  treatment  of  her  and 
the  false  position  to  which  a  mere 
whim  condemns  her,  and  is  thrown 
into  renewed  association  with  a 
former  schoolboy  lover,  Matthew 
Weybum.  Weybum  has  been  ap- 
pointed secretary  to  Lord  Ormont, 
whom  he  greatly  admires,  and  is 
revolving  plans  for  an  international 
school  which  is  to  produce  men  on 
the  English  pattern.  Constant  asso- 
ciation renews  the  old  love  and  at  last 
the  two  leave  England  together  and 
are  happy  forever  after.  They  set 
up  the  school  and  in  the  end  Lord 
Ormont  commits  to  their  keeping  his 
grand-nephew. 

Fashion,  Sir  Brilliant,  in  Arthur 
Murphy's  comedy.  The  Way  to  Keep 
Him  (1760),  a  man  of  the  world  who 
"  dresses  fashionably,  lives  fashion- 
ably, wins  your  money  fashionably, 
loses  his  own  fashionably,  and  does 
everything  fashionably." 

Fashion,  Tom,  nicknamed  "  Young 
Fashion  "  in  Vanbrugh's  The  Relapse 
(1697),  and  in  Sheridan's  rifacimento 
of  that  comedy,  A  Trip  to  Scarborough 
(1777),  the  younger  brother  of  Lord 
Foppington,  who  personates  that 
nobleman  and  wins  his  destined  bride, 
Miss  Hoyden  Cliunsy.  Through  his 
consideration  and  courtesy  he  fully 
reconciles  the  snobbish  Sir  Tunbelly, 
her  father,  after  the  fraud  has  been 
discovered  and  has  been  crowned  by 
marriage. 


Fastolfe 


148 


Faust 


Fastolfe,  Sir  John  (who  must  not 
be  confounded  with  Falstaff),  a  char- 
acter in  /  Henry  VI  where  he  is 
portrayed  as  "  a  contemptible  cra- 
ven." He  was  a  real  personage 
(^377-1459).  one  of  the  most  famous 
of  the  English  knights  who  won  their 
spurs  in  the  French  wars.  It  was  at 
the  siege  of  Patay  (1430)  that  he 
incurred  the  imputation  of  cowardice 
which  Shakespeare,  following  Holin- 
shed,  has  fixed  upon  him.  But  at  the 
most  he  seems  to  have  done  no  more 
than  to  have  withdrawn  his  troops 
from  what  seemed  to  him  inevitable 
defeat,  and  the  regent  Talbot  must 
have  been  satisfied  with  his  explana- 
tion, for  none  of  his  honors  were  taken 
away  from  him  and  he  continued  in 
high  favor  with  the  English  govern- 
ment until  his  resignation  of  his-com- 
mands  in  1440. 

This  dastard  at  the  battle  of  Patay 
Like  to  a  trusty  squire  did  run  away 
•  /  Henry  VI,  iii,  2. 

Fathom,  Ferdinand,  Count,  hero 
of  Smollett's  novel.  The  Adventures  of 
Ferdinand,  Count  Fathom  (1753),  an 
unmitigated  villain,  whose  career  is 
a  series  of  fiendish  knaveries.  There 
had  been  a  precedent  for  such  a  fiction 
in  Fielding's  Jonathan  Wild;  and 
Smollett  did  his  best,  by  introducing 
characters  of  romantic  virtue,  and 
by  leading  the  scoundrel  himself 
through  a  succession  of  scenes  afford- 
ing scope  for  circumstantial  descrip- 
tion, to  impart  to  the  tale  the  neces- 
sary amount  of  interest. 

Unlike  Fielding,  he  does  not  bring 
his  hero  to  the  gallows,  but  crushes 
the  vice  out  of  him  by  a  gradual  accu- 
mulation of  miseries,  and  then  remits 
him  to  a  life  of  further  probation 
under  a  feigned  name.  As  if  to  prove 
the  wisdom  of  this  procedure.  Fathom 
reappears  in  a  subsequent  novel  in  the 
guise  of  a  thoroughly  reformed  gentle- 
man neatly  dressed  in  black,  with  a 
visage  of  profound  melancholy,  and 
doing  much  good  in  his  neighborhood. 

Faulconbridge,  Philip,  nicknamed 
"  the  Bastard,"  natural  son  of 
Richard  I  and  Lady  Faulconbridge 
in  Shakespeare's  drama,  King  John. 
A  man  of  wit  and  high  spirits,  he  can 


mock  with  no  great  delicacy  at  his 
own  natal  misfortime.  Large-hearted 
and  large-brained,  he  has  yet  an 
insular  contempt  for  all  foreigners. 

Faulkland,  in  Sheridan's  comedy, 
The  Rivals,  lover  of  Julia  Melville,  a 
morbid,  over-anxious,  self-tormenting 
weakling. 

Fauntleroy,  Little  Lord,  in  Mrs. 
Frances  Hodgson  Burnett's  story  of 
that  name  (1886),  the  hereditary  title 
of  the  seven-year-old  hero.  His 
father  had  been  disinherited  by  the 
grandfather,  an  English  earl,  because 
of  his  marriage  with  an  American, 
but  when  the  father  dies  the  Earl 
relents  toward  the  grandson  he  has 
never  seen.  The  boy  had  been  living 
in  New  York  in  poor  and  vulgar  sur- 
roundings, against  which  his  gentle 
and  tender  mother  (known  to  him  as 
"  Dearest  "),  was  the  sole  counter- 
acting influence.  He  is  summoned 
to  England  on  condition  that  his 
mother  shall  not  accompany  him, 
but  the  boy's  frank  and  loyal  and 
generous  nature  triumphs  over  all 
prejudices  against  his  mother  as  well 
as  himself. 

Faust,  or  Faustus,  a  name  famous 
in  legend  and  literature,  is  identified 
in  real  life  with  one  Giorgius  Sabelli- 
cus  Faustus,  Junior,  a  German  stu- 
dent of  magic  first  mentioned  in  a 
letter,  dated  August  20,  1507,  from 
the  Benedictine  monk  Trithimius  to 
the  astrologer  Jfohann  Windurg  at 
Hasfurth.  Trithimius  denounced  him 
as  a  mountebank.  Melanchthon,  on 
the  contrary,  believed  that  he  was 
really  in  league  with  the  devil.  From 
these  and  other  contemporary  author- 
ities we  learn  that  he  travelled  around 
Europe  performing'  many  marvels; 
that  he  was  popularly  believed  to 
have  sold  himself  to  the  devil,  who 
accompanied  him  in  the  shape  of  a 
black  poodle;  and  that  one  morning 
he  was  found  mysteriously  dead. 
Hence  he  was  thought  to  have  been 
killed  in  the  night  hy  his  master  who 
had  carried  off  his  soul  to  hell. 
Eventually  there  crystallized  around 
Faust's  memory  the  various  mediaeval 
or  earlier  legends  concerning  a  com- 
pact between  a  mortal  and  the  devil, 


Faiistus 


149 


Fedora 


whose  original  heroes  had  been  Virgil, 
Pope  Silvester,  Friar  Bacon  or 
Michael  Scott,  all  of  which  could  find 
a  common  origin  in  pre-Christian 
Jewish  sources.  The  earliest  collec- 
tion of  Faustus  legends  was  published 
by  John  Spies  at  Frankfurt  in  1587, 
and  was  followed  by  similar  books 
and  pamphlets  in  almost  every 
European  country.  He  became  a 
favorite  figure  in  the  German  puppet 
shows.  Marlowe  introduced  him  to 
the  English  stage  in  1594  (see  Faus- 
tus, Dr.).  Following  in  the  wake  of 
the  German  legend,  Marlowe  made 
Helen  of  Troy  his  mistress.  Goethe's 
Faust  (1798)  was  practically  the  first 
to  introduce  a  new  love  element  in 
Gretchen,  the  German  diminutive  of 
Margueret.  This  gave  rise  to  an 
extensive  musical  literature  which 
utilized  this  episode  in  Goethe's  play, 
the  chief  being  La  Damnation  de 
Faust  (1846)  by  Hector  Berlioz,  and 
Faust  and  Marguerite  (1859),  an  opera 
by  Gounod. 

Faustus,  hero  of  Marlowe's  trag- 
edy. The  Tragical  History  of  Dr. 
Faustus  (1590),  founded  on  an 
English  paraphrase  (1588)  of  Johann 
Spies 's  chapbook  by  Bishop  Aylmer 
(see  Faust).  As  in  the  original 
legend,  the  main  interest  is  super- 
natural; Faust's  compact  with 
Mephistophilis  whereby  he  dooms 
his  soul  to  hell  after  twenty-four  years 
of  earthly  power  and  glory  and 
unlimited  sensual  gratification,  the 
magic  feats  and  the  ridiculous  tricks 
by  which  the  fiend  amuses  his  master's 
leisure,  and  finally  the  victim's  re- 
pentance, his  vain  attempts  to  escape 
from  his  bargain;  his  awful  end,  when 
after  exhorting  his  disciples  to  take 
warning  by  his  fate,  Faust  is  carried 
off  to  hell.  There  is  a  slight  love 
interest.  Mephistophilis,  at  Faust's 
command,  summons  Helena  of  Troy 
from  the  shades.  She  becomes  Faust's 
mistress  and  bears  him  a  child. 

Faustus  himself  is  a  rude  sketch,  but  it  is 
a  gigantic  one.  This  character  may  be  con- 
sidered as  a  personification  of  the  pride  of 
will  and  eagerness  of  curiosity,  sublimed 
beyond  the  reach  of  fear  and  remorse. — 
William  Hazlitt,  Literature  of  the  Age  of 
Elizabeth,  Lecture  ii. 


Favorita,  La,  title  of  Donizetti's 
opera  (1842)  and  pet  name  of  the 
heroine,  Leonora  de  Guzman,  the 
favorite  mistress  of  Alfonso  XI  of 
Castile.  His  son  Ferdinando  falls  in 
love  with  her.  Alfonso  is  obliged  to 
consent  to  the  marriage  in  order  to 
save  himself  from  excommunication. 
When  Ferdinando  discovered  the  true 
state  of  affairs  he  indignantly  spumed 
the  lady  and  became  a  monk. 

Featherstone,  Mr.,  in  George 
Eliot's  novel  of  English  cotmtry  life, 
Middlemarch,  a  miser  who  affords  a 
death-scene  and  a  will-reading  scene 
which  seem  to  show  the  completed 
ideal  of  what  Dickens  was  trying  for 
in  Ckuzzlewit.  He  is  as  sordid  and 
limited  as  Tennjrson's  Northern 
Farmer,  with  his  burden  of  "  prop- 
puty,  propputy."  "  There's  one 
thing  I  made  out  pretty  clear  when 
I  used  to  go  to  church,  and  it's  this: 
God  A'mighty  sticks  to  the  land.  He 
promises  land,  and  he  gives  land,  and 
he  makes  chaps  rich  with  com  and 
cattle." 

Fedora,  titular  heroine  of  a  drama 
(1883)  by  Victorien  Sardou.  Her 
full  name  is  Fedora  Romazof;  she  is 
a  princess,  young,  beautiful,  wealthy, 
living  in  St.  Petersburg  in  1882.  Her 
betrothed,  Yarischkine,  has  been 
mysteriously  slain.  Suspicion  rests 
upon  Count  Louis  Ypanof,  who  flees 
to  Paris.  Thither  Fedora  follows  him. 
With  the  knowledge  and  sanction  of 
the  police  she  encourages  him  to  fall 
in  love  with  her  in  order  to  obtain  from 
him  the  confession  of  his  crime,  but 
becomes  in  her  turn  infatuated  with 
him.  Just  when  she  has  well-nigh 
abandoned  her  suspicions  he  con- 
fesses the  crime.  She  gives  the 
alarm.  But  in  the  next  interview, 
which  is  to  betray  him  into  the  hands 
of  the  police,  he  explains  that  he  had 
killed  Yarischkine  because  he  had 
seduced  his  (Ypanof 's)  wife.  To  her 
horror  Fidora  finds  that  she  had 
delivered  him  up  to  death  for  the 
sake  of  a  man  who  was  faithless  to 
her.  His  arrest  follows,  he  discovers 
that  he  has  been  betrayed  by  a 
woman,  but  does  not  know  her  name. 
Fedora  drinks  poison,  confesses  every- 


Feenix 


150 


Ferdinand 


thing,  and  dies  with  his  kiss  of  for- 
giveness upon  her  lips. 

Fedora  in  Balzac's  Peau  de  Chagrin 
the  "  woman  without  a  heart  "  whom 
Raphael  (q.v.)  worships  as  his  first 
love.  She  is  the  representative  of 
that  "  society  "  which  in  Paris,  more 
even  than  elsewhere,  is  the  goal  of  a 
certain  class  of  ambitious  youth. 
Success  in  the  contest  means  only 
disillusionment  and  can  be  attained 
only  at  the  sacrifice  of  what  is  best 
and  truest  in  the  human  heart. 
Fedora  is  to  be  won  only  by  a  man 
who  is  as  calculating  and  self-centred 
as  herself.  Raphael  might  have  been 
saved  by  Pauline,  the  type  of  real 
love — ^love  self-sacrificing,  self-effac- 
ing, constant,  ennobling — ^but  he 
meets  her  too  late.  Blinded  by  sordid 
ambition,  he  continued  to  follow  the 
woman  without  a  heart  to  his  event- 
ual ruin. 

Feenix,  Cousin,  in  Dickens's  novel, 
Dombey  and  Son,  an  aristocratic 
personage,  tireless  in  his  allusions 
to  his  "  lovely  and  accomplished 
relative,"  the  wife  of  Mr.  Dombey. 

Feignwell,  Colonel,  hero  of  Mrs. 
Centlivre's  comedy,  A  Bold  Stroke 
for  a  Wife  (171 8).  His  name  rather 
too  blatantly  proclaims  his  most 
prominent  trait;  he  was  an  ingenious 
strategist  who  could  flatter  and  cozen 
with  a  straight  countenance.  His 
bold  strike  was  that  of  winning  the 
heiress,  Anne  Lovely,  by  passing 
himself  off  as  Simon  Pure  (q.v.),  and 
insinuating  himself  into  the  con- 
fidence and  good-will  of  her  four 
guardians,  each  a  man  of  marked 
peculiarities. 

Felton,  Septimius,  hero  of  a  novel 
of  that  name  left  unfinished  by 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  published 
posthumously  in  1872.  From  Indian 
ancestors,  Septimius  inherits  a  touch 
of  savage  passions  not  quite  elimi- 
nated by  puritanical  training.  On 
another  side  he  is  descended  from  an 
ancient  English  family,  one  of  whose 
members  had  committed  a  murder 
and  ever  afterwards  left  behind  him 
the  track  of  a  bloody  footstep  wher- 
ever he  travelled.  Septimius,  under 
the  burden  of  this  double  heritage, 


grows  up  moody  and  skeptical.  When 
the  American  Revolution  breaks  out 
he  is  more  disposed  to  bury  himself 
in  meditation  than  to  take  part  in  the 
struggle;  but  by  a  strange  accident 
he  is  involved  in  the  fight  at  Lexing- 
ton, and  kills  a  young  English  officer 
in  spite  of  himself.  He  withdraws  all 
the  more  decidedly  into  his  own 
thoughts  and  he  devotes  himself  to 
the  quest  for  an  elixir  of  life  which 
will  bestow  immortality  upon  him. 

Septimius  may  be  taken  as  in  some 
sense  an  ideal  representation  of 
Hawthorne  himself,  and  of  the  conse- 
quences of  the  revolt  of  a  fine  but 
ill-balanced  nature  against  the  prosaic 
realism  of  modern  life. 

Fenella,  in  Scott's  Peveril  of  the 
Peak,  is  trained  by  the  villainous 
Edward  Christian,  her  real  father,  in 
the  belief  that  she  is  the  daughter  of 
his  brother,  the  murdered  William 
Christian,  and  that  to  avenge  Wil- 
liam's death  is  her  "  first  great  duty 
on  earth."  As  a  pretended  deaf-mute 
and  a  "  base  eavesdropper "  she 
spends  her  girlhood  in  the  Countess  of 
Derby's  household.  ^  Her  hopeless 
love  for  Julian  Peveril  redeems  her. 
To  be  near  him  and  to  save  him  she 
assumes  the  fresh  disguise  of  "  Zarah, 
the  Moorish  sorceress  "  and  helps  to 
deliver  him  from  prison.  The  char- 
acter, like  Bulwer's  Nydia,  evidently 
owes  something  to  Goethe's  Mignon. 
Sir  Walter  is  his  1831  introduction 
cites  the  parallel  case  of  a  wandering 
woman  resident  in  his  grandfather's 
house,  who  was  believed  to  have 
feigned  deafness  and  dumbness  for 
some  years.  But  the  evidence  of  her 
deceit  rests  solely  on  the  testimony 
of  "  a  mischievous  shepherd  boy." 

Feramors,  the  name  assumed  by 
the  Prince  when  disguised  as  a  Cash- 
merian  minstrel  in  Moore's  Lalla 
Rookh. 

Ferdinand,  in  The  Tempest,  is  the 
son  of  the  King  of  Naples,  and  in 
love  with  Miranda,  daughter  of  the 
banished  Duke  of  Milan,  Prosper©. 

Ferdinand,  King  of  Navarre  in 
Shakespeare's  Love's  Labor*s  Lost,  a 
scholarly  prince  who  sets  up  a  "  little 
Academe,"  a  school  of  culture,  for 


Fernando 


151 


Feverel 


himself  and  three  companions.  He 
is  evidently  drawn  from  Henry  IV  of 
France.  In  Shakespeare's  Tempest 
Ferdinand  is  the  name  of  a  ship- 
wrecked prince,  son  of  the  usurping 
King  of  Naples,  who  wooes  and  wins 
Miranda  on  Prospero's  enchanted 
island. 

Fernando  of  Portugal,  Don,  uncle 
of  Alphonso  V,  King  of  Portugal,  and 
grandson  on  his  mother's  side  of  the 
English  John  of  Gaunt,  is  the  hero  of 
The  Steadfast  Prince,  a  tragedy  by 
Calderon. 

Taken  captive  in  an  unfortunate 
African  expedition,  he  refused  liberty 
on  the  terms  offered  ^  him  ^  by  the 
Moorish  king  and  wins  his  place 
among  the  noble  army  of  martyrs  by 
the  patient  endurance  of  protracted 
agonies  for  the  sake  of  his  faith. 

It  is  Impossible,  when  we  compare  the 
lowly  Ferdinand  with  his  cousin  and  con- 
temporary, Henry  V,  to  deny  that  the  selfish 
glory  of  the  victor  of  Agincourt  looks  poor 


in  the  purer  hght  which  encircles  the  pre- 
server of  Ceuta,  nor  can  we  help  wishing 
that  the  mightier  genius,  who  in  Prince  Hal 


bequeathed  a  fascinating  but  dangerous 
model  to  future  royal  scions,  had  known  and 
depicted  the  loftier  type  of  prince  which 
fate  reserved  to  the  hand  of  Calderon.— 
Saint  Paul's  Magazine,  October,  1873. 

Ferrars,  Endymion,  hero  of  a  politi- 
cal novel  Endymion  (1880),  in  which 
the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  then  Prime 
Minister  of  England,  has  undertaken 
to  describe  certain  features  in  the 
career  of  the  Right  Hon.  Benjamin 
Disraeli. 

The  hero  of  the  book,  at  least  the  young 
man  who  gives  the  name  to  it,  is  an  almost 
colorless  effigy  of  humanity  who  is  moved 
on  through  the  pages  by  the  alternate  efforts 
of  his  sister  and  the  woman  whom  he  ad- 
mires and  afterwards  marries,  to  the  posi- 
tion of  prime  minister,  a  position  utterly 
remote  from  the  logical  consequences  of  his 
Intellect  or  will.  He  is  the  creature  of  acci- 
dent, friendliness  and  destiny,  and  as  he  is 
shoved  along  a  step  higher  at  each  turn  of 
the  story,  the  reader  comes  to  wa'^ch  for  his 
appearance  higher  up  with  curiosity  but 
without  the  least  apprehension. — N,  Y. 
Nation. 

Ferrars,  Myra,  in  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  novel  Endymion  (i88o),  twin 
sister  to  the  titular  hero  and  his  great 
helper  in  his  upward  climb.  She 
strikes  the  keynote  of  her  brother's 


character  and  career  when  she  says 
to  him:  "  Power  and  power  alone 
should  be  your  absorbing  object,  and 
all  the  accidents  and  incidents  of  life 
should  only  be  considered  with  refer- 
ence to  the  main  result."  In  order 
to  assist  her  brother's  ambitions  she 
marries  ^  Lord  Roehampton,  and, 
when  widowed,  she  for  the  same 
reason  accepts  the  crowned  adven- 
turer (a  caricatured  portrait  of 
Napoleon  III)  who  had,  as  Prince 
Florestan,  long  admired  her  during 
his  exile  in  England. 

Ferrol,  Paul,  hero  of  two  novels  by 
Mrs.  Caroline  Wigley  Clive:  Paul 
Ferrol  (1856)  and  Why  Paul  Ferrol 
Killed  His  Wife  (1862).  The  wife, 
a  woman  of  violent  temper  and  un- 
scrupulous methods,  had  separated 
Paul  from  Elinor,  his  first  love,  in 
order  to  secure  him  for  herself.  He 
murders  her,  marries  Elinor  and  for 
a  time  escapes  suspicion,  but  con- 
fesses when  an  innocent  party  is 
found  guilty  of  the  crime,  and  escapes 
to  America.  He  had  deposited  an 
account  of  the  dead,  with  an  explana- 
tion of  its  motives,  in  the  coffin  of  his 
victim;  this  is  found  and  constitutes 
the  sequel  to  the  first  novel. 

Festus,  hero  and  title  of  a  dramatic 
poem  (1835)  by  Philip  James  Bailey, 
which  gives  a  modernized  version  of 
the  Faust  legend. 

The  hero  is  a  human  soul  of  the  highest 
gifts  and  attainments,  doomed  to  despair 
and  melancholy  and  unwillingly  ensnared 
by  sin.  The  mode  in  which  he  becomes  the 
plaything  of  the  archspirit  of  evil  is  impres- 
sive, but  hardly  intelligible;  nor  are  the 
relations  of  the  tempter  to  his  victim  ever 
realized  in  a  vividly  dramatic  or  narrative 
way.  It  would  be  an  almost  impossible  feat 
to  separate  the  story  or  plot  of  Festus  from 
Its  lyrical  and  rhetorical  ornament. — E.  W. 
Gosse:    Portraits  and  Sketches. 

Festus,  in  Robert  Browning's  Par- 
acelsus, the  old  and  faithful  friend 
who  believes  in  Paracelsus  from  the 
first.  He  is  the  husband  of  Michal, 
and  both,  at  various  stages  in  his 
career,  influence  for  good  the  mind 
of  the  hero  of  medicine. 

Feverel,  Sir  Austin,  in  George 
Meredith's  novel,  The  Ordeal  of 
Richard  Feverel  (1859),  father  of  the 
hero — a     pseudo    philosopher    who 


Feverel 


152 


Filomena 


strives  to  make  the  world  square  with 
his  ideals  and  to  fashion  his  son  in  his 
own  mould.  He  cannot  forget  the 
part  played  by  woman  in  the  fall  of 
man,  hence  he  names  the  instinct  of 
sex  the  Apple  Disease.  "  We  are 
pretty  secure  from  the  Serpent  till 
Eve  sides  with  him  "  is  his  favorite 
apothegm.  So  his  system  consists 
largely  in  protecting  his  son  against 
the  approaches  of  this  malady;  but 
Nature  beats  his  system. 

Feverel,  Richard,  titular  hero  of 
George  Meredith's  novel,  The  Ordeal 
of  Richard  Feverel,  A  Tale  of  Father 
and  Son  (1859).  The  elder  Feverel 
(see  above)  is  a  philosopher  who  tries 
to  make  the  world  square  with  his 
philosophy  and  to  bring  up  Richard, 
his  son,  to  the  highest  limit  of  human 
perfection  by  shaping  all  the  circum- 
stances of  his  youth.  The^  system 
breaks  down — the  boy  is  miserable, 
the  circumstances  turn  out  the  worst 
in  which  he  could  have  been  placed. 
Philosophy  is  beaten  by  the  attrac- 
tions which  the  outer  world,  and 
especially  the  outer  world  of  women, 
will  ever  offer  to  the  most  virtuous 
and  most  ingenuous.  The  boy  who 
is  kept  in  entire  seclusion  manages  to 
meet  a  farmer's  niece  by  moonlight, 
and  marries  her  before  he  is  twenty. 
When  he  is  married  and  his  father  is 
playing  off  the  batteries  of  the  most 
philosophical  anger  so  as  to  drive  him 
to  the  exact  stage  and  kind  of  repent- 
ance most  desirable,  the  fascinations 
of  the  unsystematic  world  again 
triumph  over  the  system,  and  the 
young  husband  is  carried  away  by 
the  trickery  and  arts  of  a  much 
naughtier  woman  than  the  young  wife 
from  whom  his  father  contrives  for  a 
time  to  separate  him. 

Fidele,  in  Shakespeare's  Cymheline, 
the  name  assumed  by  Imogen  when 
she  dons  male  attire. 

Fidessa,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene, 
the  name  assumed  by  Duessa  when 
she  wished  to  beguile  the  Red  Cross 
Knight. 

Fifine,  subject  of  Browning's  philo- 
sophical poem,  Fifine  at  the  Fair 
(1872),  a  beautiful  strolling  actress  in 
whom  the  husband  of  Elvire   (un- 


named himself  but  obviously  meant 
as  a  modern  adumbration  of  Don 
Juan)  finds  his  text  for  an  apologia. 
With  great  fertility  of  illustration  he 
seeks  to  convince  the  wife  whom  he 
loves  that  he  does  well  in  occasionally 
toying  with  the  Fifines  who  appeal  to 
his  lusts.  Browning  provides  the 
arch  voluptuary  with  a  defence  of 
inconstancy  in  marriage  which  lies 
quite  beyond  the  speculative  capacity 
of  the  traditional  Juan. 

Figaro,  hero  of  two  comedies  by 
Beaumarchais,  Le  Barbier  de  Seville 
(1775)  and  Le  Mariage  de  Figaro 
(1784).  The  latter  play  was  repro- 
duced in  English  by  Thomas  Holcroft 
under  the  title,  The  Follies  of  a  Day 
(1784).  Several  operas  have  been 
founded  on  the  two  plays,  notably 
Mozart's  Nozze  di  Figaro  (1786), 
Paisiello's  //  Barbier e  di  Siviglia 
(18 10),  and  Rossini's  II  Barbier e  di 
Siviglia  (18 16). 

In  the  first  play  Figaro  is  a  barber, 
in  the  second  a  valet,  and  each  avoca- 
tion gives  him  ample  opportunity  to 
exhibit  his  consummate  adroitness  in 
evading  the  consequences  of  his  own 
audacity  in  stratagem  and  intrigue, 
and  in  preserving  his  sang  froid  and 
alertness  of  mind  in  the  most  em- 
barrassing situations. 

In  Figaro,  Beaumarchais  has  personified 
the  tiers  Hat,  superior  in  wit,  industry,  and 
activity  to  birth,  rank,  or  fortune,  in  whose 
hand  lies  the  political  power;  so  that  the 
idea  of  the  piece  is  not  only  a  satirical  alle- 
gory upon  the  government  and  nobility  of 
that  epoch,  but  a  living  manifesto  upon  the 
inequality,  just  or  unjust,  of  society. — Rose. 

Fillpot,  Toby,  hero  of  The  Brown 
Jug,  a  favorite  English  drinking  song 
by  Rev.  Francis  Fawkes  (1721-1777). 
It  opens 

Dear  Tom,  this  brown  jug  which  now  foams 

with  mild  ale 
(In  which  I  will  drink  to  sweet  Nan  of  the 

vale) 
Was  once  Toby  Fillpot,  a  thirsty  old  soul, 

and  goes  on  to  explain  the  process  of 
his  metamorphosis  from  human  clay 
to  earthenware. 

Filomena,  St.,  in  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic calendar,  a  saint  who  tended  the 
sick  and  wounded.    A  famous  picture 


Finch 


153 


Firmilian 


in  Pisa  by  Sabatelli  represents  her 
floating  down  from  heaven  attended 
by  two  angels  bearing  a  lily,  a  palm 
and  a  javelin.  In  the  foreground  are 
patients  cured  by  her  intercession. 
A  curious  coincidence  in  name  and 
mission  suggested  Longfellow's  poem 
of  Santa  Filomena,  written  in  praise 
of  Florence  Nightingale  (1820-1900), 
the  first  and  most  famous  of  war 
nurses.  Filomena  (see  Philomel) 
means  "  nightingale." 

Nor  ever  shall  be  wanting  here 
The  palm,  the  lily,  and  the  spear: 
The  symbols  that  of  yore 
St.  Filomena  bore. 

Longfellow:    Sta.  Filomena. 

Finch,  Miss,  the  heroine  of  Wilkie 
Collins'  novel,  Poor  Miss  Finch 
(1872).  She  is  a  beautiful  blind  girl 
engaged  to  Oscar  Dubourg  whose  twin 
brother  Nugent  is  also  in  love  with 
her.  Oscar  takes  nitrate  of  silver  for 
epileptic  fits,  and  as  a  result  of  the 
treatment  turns  all  over  to  a  perma- 
nent blue  color.  Now,  Miss  Finch 
has  personal  prejudices  on  the  score 
of  complexion,  together  with  the 
natural  antipathy  of  the  blind  to 
anything  dark.^  Were  she  once  to 
detect  the  dyeing  of  his  skin,  her 
instincts  would  infallibly  prove  far 
too  strong  for  her  love.  The  conse- 
quence is,  constant  precautions 
against  betrayal,  and  a  series  of  dan- 
gerous mystifications.  However,  the 
secret  is  kept,  and  plays  into  the 
hands  of  the  twin  brother.  Nugent 
fights  his  passion  for  a  long  time 
before  he  yields  to  it.  Then  he  be- 
comes almost  unnaturally  a  scheming 
villain.  But,  recollecting  that  this 
pair  of  Dromios  are  identical,  down 
to  the  tones  of  the  voice,  in  every- 
thing except  their  characters  and 
complexions,  it  is  easy  to  see  how 
ingeniously  circtunstances  are  made 
to  complicate  themselves  in  the 
hands  of  a  planner  of  labyrinths  so 
experienced  as  Mr.  Collins. 

Finn,  Huckleberry,  a  character  in 
Mark  Twain's  Adventures  of  Tom 
Sawyer  (1876)  who  reappears  as  the 
hero  of  Adventures  of  Huckleberry 
Finn  (1885),  an  autobiographical  tale 
of  boyish  adventure  along  the  Mis- 


sissippi River  told  as  it  appeared  to 
Huck  Finn. 

In  Tom  Sawyer  we  saw  Huckleberry  Finn 
from  the  outside;  in  the  present  volume  we 
see  him  from  the  inside.  He  is  almost  as 
much  a  delight  to  any  one  who  has  been  a 
boy  as  was  Tom  Sawyer.  But  only  he  or 
she  who  has  been  a  boy  can  truly  enjoy 
this  record  of  his  adventures,  and  of  his 
sentiments  and  of  his  sayings.  Old  maids 
of  either  sex  will  wholly  fail  to  understand 
him  or  to  like  him,  or  to  see  his  significance 
and  his  value.  Like  Tom  Sawyer,  Huck 
Finn  is  a  genuine  boy;  he  is  neither  a  girl  in 
boy's  clothes  like  many  of  the  modem 
heroes  of  juvenile  fiction,  nor  is  he  a  "little 
man,"  a  full-grown  man  cut  down;  he  is  a 
boy,  just  a  boy,  only  a  boy.  The  contrast 
between  Tom  Sawyer,  who  is  the  child  of 
respectable  parents,  decently  brought  up, 
and  Huckleberry  Finn,  who  is  the  child  of 
the  town  drunkard,  not  brought  up  at  all, 
is  made  distinct  by  a  hundred  artistic 
touches,  not  the  least  natural  of  which  is 
Huck's  constant  reference  to  Tom  as  his 
ideal  of  what  a  boy  should  be. — Saturday 
Review. 

Finn,  Phineas,  hero  of  Phineas 
Finn,  the  Irish  Member  (1869),  a 
novel  by  Anthony  Trollope,  and  its 
sequel,  Phineas  Redux.  Starting  as 
the  impecunious  son  of  an  Irish 
coimtry  doctor,  he  gets  into  Parlia- 
ment at  five  and  twenty,  is  in  the 
Ministry  a  year  or  two  afterwards, 
fights  a  duel,  rides  an  unmanageable 
horse,  saves  a  cabinet  minister  from 
the  hands  of  garroters,  and  being  as 
strong  as  a  coalheaver  and  as  hand- 
some as  an  Apollo  is  besieged  by 
several  ladies  of  rank  and  wealth. 
At  the  call  of  duty  he  leaves  London 
to  settle  down  in  contented  obscurity 
at  Cork  with  a  poor  Irish  girl  whose 
only  merit  is  that  she  is  more  deeply 
in  love  with  him  than  any  of  the  rest. 
In  the  sequel  she  dies  and  he  returns 
to  London  and  politics. 

Firmilian,  hero  of  a  burlesque 
tragedy  of  that  name  by  W.  Edmon- 
stone  Aytoun,  published  (1854)  imder 
the  pseudonym  of  T.  Percy  Jones.  A 
student  at  the  University  of  Badajoz, 
Firmilian  is  determined  to  be  a  poet. 
He  is  writing  a  tragedy,  Cain,  that 
"  shall  win  the  world  by  storm."  He 
finds  himself  handicapped  because 
he  has  no  personal  experience  of  the 
agonies  of  remorse.  To  supply  this 
deficiency  he  poisons  the  wine  of  three 
friends  in  a  tavern.     Yet  this  first 


Firmin 


154 


Fleming 


essay  proves  to  be  a  mistake.  They 
drink  and  die  while  he  is  absent.  He 
had  failed  to  witness  their  dying 
throes.  So  he  blows  up  a  cathedral 
with  gunpowder  and  watches  the 
catastrophe  from  the  pillar  of  St. 
Simeon  Stylites.  Even  now  he  is  not 
satisfied.  Priest,  choir  and  worship- 
pers were  all  strangers  to  him.  Had 
there  been  a  benefactor,  a  relative 
among  them  he  might,  indeed,  have 
felt  wicked.  As  mere  incidents  he 
kills  a  rival  poet  and  a  critic  and  then 
plunges  into  sensuality,  hoping  that 
adultery  may  furnish  those  glorious 
qualms  of  conscience  which  murder 
fails  to  yield.  He  is  hounded  by  the 
Inquisition,  becomes  the  victim  of  his 
own  haunted  imagination,  finally  falls 
over  a  precipice  and  is  killed. 

Firmin,  Dr.  George  Brandon,  in 
Thackeray's  Adventures  of  Philip, 
father  of  the  hero,  an  unctuous  hypo- 
crite, handsome,  polished,  attractive 
to  women.  Under  the  name  of 
George  Brandon  he  had  already  made 
his  appearance  in  A  Shabby  Genteel 
Story  as  the  seducer  of  Catherine 
Gans  iq.v.). 

Firmin,  Philip,  hero  of  Thackeray's 
novel,  The  Adventures  of  Philip 
(1861).  Rough,  boisterous  and  un- 
couth, he  is  a  self-determined  contrast 
to  the  smooth  villainy  of  his  father, 
Dr.  Brandon  Firmin.  Because  Bran- 
don was  polished  and  polite,  Philip 
looked  upon  those  qualities  as  mask- 
ing insincerity  and  treachery,  and  so 
eschews  them  with  loud  disdain. 
Being  big  and  strong,  red-haired  and 
red-bearded,  he  can  exhibit  to  some 
purpose  his  quarrelsome  and  aggres- 
sive yet  not  ungenerous  temper,  and 
too  often  alienates  friend^  or  would- 
be  friend  by  a  determination  to 
indulge  his  headlong  independence 
of  speech  and  action. 

Fitz  Boodle,  George  Savage,  the 
autobiographic  hero  of  various  tales 
and  sketches  by  W.  M.  Thackeray, 
collected  together  under  the  general 
title,  The  Fitz  Boodle  Papers,  and 
the  feigned  narrator  of  Men's  Wives. 
He  is  represented  as  the  indolent  and 
rather  impudent  younger  son  of  a 
country   baronet   with    considerable 


knowledge  of  fast  life  both  in  Bohemia 
and  in  Belgravia,  whose  passion  for 
tobacco  proves  disastrous  in  some  of 
his  love  affairs. 

Fitzbom,  in  Disraeli's  novel, 
Vivian  Grey,  a  supposed  portrait  of 
Sir  Robert  Peel. 

Fixlein,  Quintus,  hero  and  title  of  a 
romance  by  John  Paul  Richter. 

Flamboroughs,  The  Miss  (sic), 
in  Goldsmith's  Vicar  of  Wakefield, 
daughters  of  Solomon  Flamborough, 
an  over-loquacious  farmer.  Their 
simplicity  and  wholesomeness  are 
favorably  contrasted  with  the  airs 
assumed  by  pseudo  ladies  of  fashion 
introduced  by  Squire  Thomhill. 

Flanders,  Moll,  heroine  of  and 
feigned  autobiographer  of  The  For- 
tunes and  Misfortunes  of  Moll  Flan- 
ders (1722),  a  realistic  novel  by 
Daniel  Defoe.  A  thief  and  a  harlot, 
she  went  to  the  bad  early  in  life,  was 
five  times  married  without  any  regard 
for  the  laws  against  bigamy,  but  ends 
as  a  penitent. 

Flash,  Sandy,  in  Bayard  Taylor's 
novel.  The  Story  of  Kennett,  is  the 
notorious  highwayman,  Fitzpatrick, 
the  traditions  of  whose  deeds  of  daring 
still  survive  in  Chester  County,  Penn- 
sylvania. Long  after  his  death  in  the 
early  nineteenth  century  searches 
were  made  for  the  treasures  he  was 
reputed  to  have  buried  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Castle  Rocks. 

Fleaunce,  in  Shakespeare's  Mac- 
beth, the  son  of  Banquo.  He  fled  to 
Wales  on  his  father's  murder,  married 
a  Welsh  princess,  and  became  the 
ancestor  of  the  royal  house  of  Stuart. 

Fleming,  Contarini,  hero  of  a  novel 
of  that  name  (1832)  by  Benjamin 
Disraeli,  in  which  he  has  obviously 
drawn  his  own  portrait  as  he  pictured 
himself  in  youth.  Contarini  would 
fain  be  a  poet,  but  his  worldly  wise 
father  (Isaac  D' Israeli?)  dissuades 
him  and  he  enters  politics. 

Fleming,  Farmer,  in  George  Mere- 
dith's novel,  Rhoda  Fleming,  father 
of  the  heroine,  an  excellent  specimen 
of  the  sturdy  British  yeoman,  mask- 
ing a  kind  heart  under  a  stem  and 
unyielding  exterior,  whose  ideas  are 
very  simple,  but  obstinate  and  deep- 


Fleming 


155 


Floriani 


rooted  in  proportion.  He  is  over- 
whelmingly grateful  to  Algernon 
Blanco  the  man  who  had  seduced 
and  afterwards  married  his  daugh- 
ter Dahlia,  though  he  knows  him  to 
be  a  villain,  and  he  insists  on  her 
joining  her  husband,  though  this 
means  certain  and  enduring  misery 
to  both. 

Fleming,  John,  hero  of  T.  B. 
Aldrich's  short  story,  Marjorie  Daw, 
and  of  the  same  author's  Queen  of 
Sheha. 

Fleming,  Paul,  the  hero  of  Long- 
fellow's Hyperion  (1839).  A  young 
American  poet,  he  starts  out  on  a 
European  tour  under  the  shadow  of  a 
great  afifliction.  He  has  lost  his  young 
wife  and  his  child.  Plimged  at  first 
into  deep  despair,  his  youth  finally 
reasserts  itself  and,  though  chastened 
and  subdued  by  the  ordeal  through 
which  he  has  passed,  he  recovers 
some  measure  of  cheerfulness  and 
finds  that  there  still  lies  before  him 
a  world  of  duties  and  hopes  and  aspira- 
tions. In  this  mood  he  meets  and 
falls  in  love  with  Mary  Ashburton 
(g.v.),  but  she  repels  his  suit. 

Fleming,  Rhoda,  titular  heroine  of 
a  novel  by  George  Meredith  (1865), 
the  younger  sister  of  Dahlia,  who  has 
brought  shame  upon  herself  and  her 
family  and  fled  from  their  presence. 
Rhoda  goes  in  search  of  Dahlia  and 
never  rests  until  she  has  found  her 
and,  as  she  thinks,  righted  her  wrong, 
though  in  truth  her  fierce  obstinacy 
has  only  shattered  her  poor  sister's 
returning  gleam  of  long-deferred 
happiness.  Convinced  at  last  that 
she  had  been  mistaken,  and  that  she, 
too,  had  something  to  repent  of,  the 
proud  nature  melts  and  we  have  a 
final  glimpse  of  her,  tamed  and  soft- 
ened, in  the  keeping  of  Robert  Arm- 
strong, the  lover  who  deserved  her 
so  well. 

Flestrin,  Quinbus,  the  name  which 
the  Lilliputians  in  Gulliver*s  Travels 
apply^  to  Gulliver.  Swift  explains 
that  in  the  Lilliputian  language  this 
means  "  man-moimtain." 

Fleur  de  Marie,  in  Eugene  Sue's 
Mysteries  of  Paris,  a  young  maiden, 
the  lost  daughter  of  Rudolph,  Grand 


Duke  of  Gerolstein,  and  his  mistress 
(he  believes  her  to  be  dead),  who  is 
brought  up  amid  murderers,  prosti- 
tutes and  thieves  in  the  lowest 
quarters  of  the  French  metropolis; 
but  who  has  retained  through  all 
surroundings  her  innate  purity  of 
soul,  delicacy  of  sentiment  and 
warmth  of  heart. 

Florae,  Comte  de,  in  Thackeray's 
novel.  The  Newcomes  (1855),  the 
son  of  a  saintly  Catholic  lady  who 
in  her  youth  had  loved  and  been  be- 
loved by  Colonel  Newcome.  The 
colonel  takes  a  great  interest  in  the 
young  man  when  he  comes  to  London, 
though  he  is  strangely  unlike  his 
mother.  A  mixture  of  good  sense  and 
good  breeding  with  amazing  levity 
and  ludicrous  oddities,  he  becomes  a 
general  favorite  by  reason  of  his  bon- 
homie, his  prodigality,  his  perennial 
high  spirits.  His  Franco-English 
speech  is  a  linguistic  triumph. 

Florestan,  Prince,  in  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  novel,  Endymion  (1880),  with 
**  his  graceful  bow  that  always  won 
a  heart,"  who  sets  out  from  England 
in  a  yacht,  and  conquers  his  kingdom 
in  ten  days  after  writing  a  pretty  note 
to  Lady  Roehampton  (Lady  Palmer- 
ston),  is  a  sort  of  caricature  portrait 
of  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III. 

The  character  of  Louis  Napoleon's  coun- 
terpart is  carefully  and  skilfully  drawn.  He 
first  appears  as  a  boy  entrusted  to  the  care 
of  Mr.  Sidney  Wilton  by  his  mother.  Queen 
Hortense,  who  is  introduced  under  the  ill- 
omened  name  of  Agrippina.  His  English 
guardian  renounces  his  acquaintance  when 
he  breaks  his  parole  in  a  second  attempt  to 
recover  his  throne.  His  final  attainment  of 
his  object  is  accomplished  after  the  fashion, 
not  of  the  third,  but  of  the  first  Napoleon. 
His  ambiguous  position  in  England,  nis  real 
or  professed  belief  in  destiny,  and  his  reso- 
lute use  of  opportunities,  are  happily  de- 
scribed.— Saturday  Review. 

Floriani,  Lucretia,  in  George  Sand's 
romance  of  that  name  (1846),  an 
actress  who — surfeited  with  the  noisy 
life  of  the  theatres,  with  ^  illicit 
amours,  with  fame  itself — retires  to 
a  villa  on  Lake  Como.  One  of  her 
former  friends,  Salvador,  brings  to 
her  retreat  a  stranger,  Prince  Karol. 
He  is  melancholy,  neurotic  and  con- 
sumptive. His  extreme  refinement 
and  delicacy  had  revolted  at  what  he 


Florimel 


156 


Blorisel 


had  heard  of  Lucretia's  past;  never- 
theless he  now  falls  passionately  in 
love  with  her;  despite  a  violent 
struggle  against  himself;  despite  all 
reactions  of  despair  and  remorse.  As 
to  Lucretia,  she  allows  herself  to  be 
loved  and  even  to  love,  in  a  caressing, 
maternal  way,  and  yields  herself  to 
him  but  only  in  such  measure  as  her 
solicitude  for  his  welfare  will  permit. 
He  becomes  insanely  jealous;  he 
resents  Salvador's  tone  of  familiarity 
toward  the  former  *'  friend,"  he  tor- 
tures Lucretia  with  his  doubts, 
suspicions,  accusations,  upbraidings, 
until  at  last  she  breaks  away  from 
him. 

In  this  book  George  Sand  has  told 
with  a  few  necessary  changes  of  detail 
the  story  of  her  own  liason  with 
Frederick  Chopin,  the  musician.  She 
denied,  of  course,  that  Chopin  was 
Prince  Karol,  but  contemporaries 
were  not  to  be  deceived.  Liszt  in  his 
biography  of  Chopin  quotes  many 
passages  from  the  novel.  Further- 
more, Chopin  recognized  himself  and 
was  greatly  annoyed. 

Florimel,  the  Fair,  in  Spenser's 
Faery  Queene^  books  iii-iv  (1590- 
1596),  a  maiden  whose  hand  was 
sought  by  Sir  Satyrane,  Sir  Peridure 
and  Sir  Calidore,  but  herself  in  love 
with  the  unresponsive  Marinel.  At 
last,  when  Marinel  was  reported  slain 
by  Britomart,  she  started  out  to  dis- 
cover what  truth  was  in  the  rumor. 
Proteus  intercepted  her  and  shut  her 
up  in  a  dungeon  "  deep  in  the  bottom 
of  a  huge,  great  rock."  One  day 
Proteus  gave  a  banquet  to  the  sea 
gods  which  Marinel  and  his  mother 
attended  and  he,  wandering  from  the 
table,  overheard  Florimel  bewailing 
the  hard  fate  that  had  befallen  her 
"  and  all  for  Marinel."  His  heart 
was  touched,  and  with  the  aid  of 
Neptune  he  released  the  maiden  and 
married  her. 

She  wore  a  golden  girdle,  once  the 
cestus  of  Venus,  but  forfeited  by  that 

foddess  when  she  wantoned  with 
lars,  its  peculiar  property  being 
that  it  "  loosed  or  tore  asunder  "  n 
clasped  around  the  waist  of  an  un- 
chaste woman.   A  witch  made  a  coun- 


terfeit Florimel  out  of  Riphasan,  snow 
mixed  with  "  iBne  mercury  and  virgin 
wax,"  and  for  a  time  this  imposed 
upon  her  friends  and  lovers,  but  the 
enchantment  was  finally  dissolved 
and  she  melted  into  nothingness, 
leaving  no  wrack  behind  but  the 
golden  girdle. 

Her  name  is  compounded  of  two  Latin 
words  meaning  honey  and  flowers,  thus  be- 
tokening the  sweet  and  delicate  elements  of 
which  her  nature  is  moulded.  She  seems  to 
express  the  gentle  delicacy  and  timid  sensi- 
tiveness of  woman;  and  her  adventures,  the 
perils  and  rude  encounters  to  which  those 
qualities  are  exposed  in  a  world  of  passion 
and  violence.  She  flees  alike  from  friend 
and  foe,  and  finds  treachery  in  those  upon 
whom  she  had  thrown  herself  for  protection; 
and  yet  she  is  introduced  to  us  under  cir- 
cumstances not  altogether  consistent  with 
feminine  delicacy,  as  having  left  the  court 
of  the  fairy  queen  in  pursuit  of  a  knight  who 
did  not  even  return  her  passion. — Georgb 

S.    HiLLIARD. 

Florinda,  the  Helen  of  Spain.  She 
is  the  heroine  of  Southey's  epic, 
Roderick,  the  Last  of  the  Goths  (see 
Roderick).  Landor,  in  his  Count 
Julian,  calls  her  Cava.  She  was 
Julian's  daughter;  Roderick  ravished 
her  and  thus  sent  Julian  into  the 
enemy's  camp  and  paved  the  way  for 
the  Moorish  occupation  of  Spain.  At 
the  finale  Roderick  (now  become  a 
monk)  receives  the  dying  confession 
of  Julian  and  is  recognized  by  Julian's 
daughter: 

.    .     .    Round  hia  neck  she  threw 
Her  arms,  and  cried,  "My  Roderick;  mine 

in  heaven  I" 
Groaning,  he  claspt  her  close,  and  in  that  act 
And  agony  her  happy  spirit  fled. 

Southby:    Roderick,  etc.,  xxiv. 

Florisel,  Don,  hero  of  the  Exploits 
and  Adventures  of  Don  Florisel  of 
Nicea  (1835),  a  ninth  book  in  the 
Amadis  series  added  by^  Feliciano  de 
Silva  Burgos.  In  the  mien  of  a  shep- 
herd he  wooes  a  princess,  herself  dis- 
guised as  a  shepherdess,  and  his  was 
therefore  an  appropriate  name  for 
the  prince  in  The  Winter's  Tale  (see 
Florizel).  The  story  became  one  of 
the  most  popular  romances  of  the 
Amadis  cycle,  and  was  speedily  trans- 
lated from  the  Spanish  into  French 
and  Italian,  though  apparently  not 
into  English. 


i 


Florizel 


157 


Fogg 


Florizel,  in  The  Winter's  Tale 
(1611),  the  son  of  Polixenes,  King  of 
Bohemia,  ftill  of  the  innocence  and 
chivalry  of  unstained  youth,  who 
falls  in  love  with  Perdita  (q.v.)  and 
courts  her,  Uttle  dreaming  of  her 
lofty  lineage,  imder  the  name  of 
Doricles. 

George  IV  assumed  the  name  of 
Florizel  in  his  correspondence  with 
Mrs.  Mary  Robinson,  actress  and 
poet,  whom  he  addressed  as  Perdita, 
the  part  in  which  he  first  saw  her  and 
fell  in  love  with  her. 

Floyd,  Aurora,  heroine  of  a  novel  of 
that  name  (1863),  by  Miss  M.  E. 
Braddon. 

The  secret  of  Aurora  Floyd  is  much  better 
managed  than  the  secret  of  Lady  Audley, 
and  it  required  much  courage  in  Miss 
Braddon  to  choose  exactly  the  same  sub- 
stance of  the  secret — namely,  the  previous 
marriage  of  the  principal  character  of  the 
story,  and  try  her  hand  at  writing  it  again 
so  as  to  make  herself  perfect  in  it. — Saturday 
Review. 

Fluellen,  in  Shakespeare's  historical 
play,  Henry  V  (1599),  a  Welsh  cap- 
tain in  the  EngUsh  army,  valorous, 
voluble  and  amusingly  pedantic.  A 
famous  example  of  his  logical  futility 
is  his  parallel  between  Henry  V  and 
Alexander  the  Great:  "  One  was 
bom  in  Monmouth  and  the  other  in 
Macedon,  both  which  places  begin 
with  M  and  in  both  a  river  flowed  " 
(Act  iv,  Sc.  7). 

Fluellen  the  Welshman  is  the  most  enter- 
taining character  in  the  piece.  He  is  good- 
natured,  brave,  choleric,  and  pedantic.  His 
parallel  between  Alexander  and  Harry  of 
Monmouth,  and  his  desire  to  have  "some 
disputations"  with  Captain  Macmorris  on 
the  discipline  of  the  Roman  wars,  in  the 
heat  of  the  battle,  are  never  to  be  forgotten. 
His  treatment  of  Pistol  is  as  good  as  Pistol's 
treatment  of  his  French  prisoner. — Hazlitt: 
Characters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays. 

Flush,  the  canine  hero  of  Mrs. 
Browning's  stanzas.  To  Flush,  my 
dog.  He  was  a  gift  to  the  poet  from 
her  "  dear  and  admired  "  friend,  Miss 
Mitford,  and  belonged  to  "  the 
beautiful  race  she  has  rendered  cele- 
brated among  English  and  American 
readers." 

Flutter,  Sir  Fopling,  in  Sir  George 
Etheredge's  comedy  of  The  Man  of 
Mode  or  Sir  Fopling  Flutter  (1676),  is 


a  coxcomb  in  whom  the  Francomania 
of  the  day  is  satirized.  "  He  went  to 
Paris,"  says  his  friend  Dorimant,  "a 
plain,  bashful  English  blockhead,  and 
is  returned  a  fine,  imdertaking  French 
fop."  An  exquisite  who  wears  gloves 
up  to  his  elbows,  curls  his  hair  with 
painful  precision,  orders  every  article 
of  his  wardrobe  direct  from  Paris,  and 
engages  none  but  French  servants, 
he  is  never  more  delighted  than  when 
he  is  taken  for  a  Frenchman.  Beau 
Hewit  is  generally  held  to  have  sat 
for  the  character,  though  many  of 
Etheredge's  contemporaries  traced  in 
it  great  resemblances  to  himself. 
Flying  Dutchman.     See  Vander- 

DECKEN. 

Fogarty,  Phil,  hero  of  Thackeray's 
burlesque,  Phil  Fogarty,  a  Tale  of  the 
Onety-Oneth,  in  Punch's  Prize  Novel- 
ists. A  parody  of  Lever's  military 
novels  so  true  to  the  original  that 
Lever  humorously  declared  he  might 
as  well  shut  up  shop,  and  actually  did 
alter  the  character  of  his  novels. 

Fogg,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  Pickwick 
Papers,  partner  in  the  firm  of  Dodson 
and  Fogg,  solicitors — "  an  elderly 
pimply-faced,  vegetable  diet  sort  of 
man  ...  a  kind  of  being  who 
seemed  to  be  an  essential  part  of  the 
desk  at  which  he  was  writing  and  to 
have  as  much  thought  or  sentiment. 

Fogg,  Phileas,  hero  of  Jules  Verne's 
novel,  Around  the  World  in  Eighty 
Days.  A  typical  French  ideal  of  the 
typical  Englishman,  respectable, 
methodical,  and  phlegmatic  to  the 
point  of  imperturbabihty,  Mr.  Fogg 
wagers  in  his  London  club  that  he 
can  make  the  circuit  of  the  world  in 
eighty  days.  He  starts  that  night. 
Passepartout,  his  French  valet,  goes 
with  him.  All  obstacles  are  con- 
quered by  his  iron  will,  invincible 
coolness,  unfailing  resource  and  Napo- 
leonic readiness  to  sacrifice  every- 
thing else  to  the  essential — save  only 
humanity.  Twice  he  risks  defeat  by 
this  exception.  He  saves  the  beauti- 
fid  Hindoo  widow  Aouda  from  suttee; 
he  rescues  Passepartout  from  an 
infuriated  Chinese  mob.  On  the 
eightieth  day,  ten  minutes  before  the 
appointed  time,  he  reaches  his  club. 


Foker 


168 


Fore  and  Aft 


Foker,  Harry  (i.e.,  Henry),  in 
Thackeray's  novel,  Pendennis,  a  gay 
young  man,  generous,  kindly,  eccen- 
tric, effusive,  and  impartially  friendly 
to  high  and  low,  for  he  is  the  grandson 
of  an  earl  on  his  mother's  side,  and 
on  his  father's  the  descendant  of  a 
wealthy  house  of  brewers,  which,  as 
we  learn  from  The  Virginians,  was 
founded  by  one  Foker  or  Voelker  in 
Queen  Anne's  time. 

Foker  differs  from  Thackeray's  other 
characters,  for  there  can  be  little  doubt  it 
was  an  accurate  portrait  of  Andrew  Arce- 
deckne  of  the  Garrick  Club.  It  was  prob- 
ably this  which  was  the  cause  of  Thackeray's 
being  blackballed  at  the  Traveller's  Club, 
where  the  ballot  is  by  members  and  not  by 
the  committee,  on  the  grounds  that  the 
members  feared  they  might  appear  in  some 
later  novel.  It  is  said  that  Arcedeckne  was 
small  in  stature  and  eccentric  in  his  mode  of 
dressing,  drove  stagecoaches  as  an  amateur, 
loved  fighting-cocks  and  the  prize-ring,  and 
had  a  large  estate  in  Norfolk.  The  Hon. 
Henry  Coke  says  he  was  so  hke  a  seal  that 
he  was  called  "Phoca"  by  his  intimates.  It 
was  Arcedeckne  who  criticised  Thackeray's 
first  lecture  on  "The  Four  Georges." 
"Bravo,  Thack,  my  boy!  Uncommon  good 
show!  But  it'll  never  go  without  a  piannerl " 
There  was,  however,  no  enmity  between 
them.  Thackeray  declared  his  model  to  be 
"not  half  a  bad  fellow;"  and  Arcedeckne 
remarked,  "Awfully  good  chap  old  Thack 
was.  Lor'  bless  you,  he  didn't  mind  me  a 
bit.  But  I  did  take  it  out  of  him  now  and 
again.  Never  gave  him  time  for  repartie." — 
Louis  Melville:  Some  Aspects  of  Thack- 
eray. 

Fondlove,  Sir  William,  in  Sheridan 
Knowles'  comedy,  The  Love-  Chase,  a 
sprightly  sexagenarian  who  presumes 
too  much  upon  his  self-imagined 
youthfulness  when  he  marries  a 
woman  of  forty. 

Fool,  in  Shakespeare's  King  Lear. 

The  fool  is  no  comic  buffoon  to  make  the 
groundlings  laugh  .  .  .  He  is  as  won- 
derful a  creation  as  Caliban;  his  wild  bab- 
blings and  inspired  idiocy  articulate  and 
gauge  the  horrors  of  the  scene. — Cole- 
ridge. 

Foppington,  Lord,  a  typical  English 
coxcomb  who  appears  in  Sir  John 
Vanbrugh's  comedy.  The  Relapse 
(1697),  and  successively  in  Gibber's 
Careless  Husband  (1704),  Sheridan's 
Trip  to  Scarborough  (1777),  and 
Buchanan's  Miss  Tomboy  (1890).  He 
is  the  Sir  Novelty  Fashion  in  Gibber's 
Love's  Last  Shift  (1696),  raised  to  the 


peerage  and  converted  from  a  mere 
puppet  into  a  brilliant  caricature. 
Gibber  was  much  pleased  with  the 
compliment,  and  as  he  had  acted  the 
part  of  Sir  Novelty  in  his  own  play 
so  a  year  later  he  appeared  as  Fop- 
pington in  its  sequel,  earning  thereby, 
as  a  comedian,  "  a  second  flight 
of  reputation  "  (Gibber:  Apology), 
Vanbrugh  makes  his  hero  express 
equal  delight  in  his  new  dignity. 
"  Strike  me  dumb —  'my  Lord,' '  your 
lordship  ' — sure  whilst  I  was  a  knight 
I  was  a  very  nauseous  fellow."  He 
is  the  true  fop  of  the  period  with  all 
his  qualities  exaggerated.  So  he  finds 
his  life  a  perpetual  "  round  of  de- 
lights "  and  believes  himself  agreeable 
to  all  and  irresistible  to  women. 
"  God's  curse.  Madam!  "  he  cries  in 
dismay  when  Amanda  strikes  him  in 
self-defence,  "  I  am  a  peer  of  the 
realm  !  " 

Voltaire  gallicised  Lord  Foppington 
as  Le  Gomte  de  Boursouffle. 

Ford,  Master,  in  Shakespeare's 
comedy,  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor^ 
a  gentleman  of  fortune  residing  near 
Windsor,  whose  middle-aged  wife  is 
an  object  of  desire  to  Sir  John  Fal- 
staff.  Ford  assumes  the  name  of 
Brook  (see  Brook,  Master)  in  order 
to  pass  as  a  stranger,  wins  the  knight's 
confidence,  and  learns  from  him  the 
entire  course  of  the  wooing  which  at 
first  he  takes  to  be  serious  and  is  cor- 
respondingly troubled.  When  he 
learns  the  joke  he  himiors  Falstaff  to 
the  top  of  his  bent  and  helps  to  plan 
and  carry  out  the  final  exposure. 

Ford,  Mistress,  one  of  the  Merry 
Wives  (see  above).  Mistress  Anne 
Pa^e  being  the  other.  Both  are 
besieged  by  Falstaff,  who  writes 
identically  the  same  love  letter  to 
each.  Theyexchange  confidences  and 
agree  to  lure  the  knight  on  to  a 
catastrophe  which  makes  him  a 
public  laughing  stock. 

Fore  and  Aft,  in  Rudyard  Kipling's 
story,  The  Drutns  of  the  Fore  and  Aft, 
a  nickname  given  derisively  to  a 
regiment  of  raw  recruits  (real  title, 
"  Fore  and  Fit "),  in  memory  of  a 
sudden  calamity  which  befalls  them 
in  an  Afghan  pass  when,  but  for  the 


Foresight 


159 


Fracasse 


two  little  blackguard  "  drums "  or 
drummer  boys,  they  would  have  been 
cut  to  pieces,  as  they  were  routed,  by 
a  dashing  troop  of  Ghazis.  The  two 
little  heroes,  Jakin  and  Lew,  who 
conquer  only  to  die,  are  stunted 
"  gutter  birds  "  who  swore,  smoked 
and  drank  and  were  the  disgrace  of 
the  regiment,  and  had  but  one  ambi- 
tion— to  wipe  away  the  stigma  of 
being  bloomin'  non-combatants. 

Foresight,  in  Congreve's  comedy. 
Love  for  Love  (1695),  a  ridiculous  old 
astronomer,  father  of  Angelica,  with 
whom  Valentine  Legend  is  in  love. 

Formal,  Sir,  a  grandiloquent  and 
conceited  character  in  Shadwell's 
comedy,  The  Virtuoso  (1676).  He 
has  been  saved  from  oblivion  only  by 
an  allusion  in  Dryden's  MacFlecknoe, 
which  insinuates  that  Shadwell's 
caricature  was  really  a  bit  of  self- 
portraiture,  and  that  his  own  style 
was  as  inflated  and  pompous  as  Sir 
Formal's: 

And   when   false  flowers   of   rhetoric   thou 

wouldst  call. 
Trust  nature,  do  not  labor  to  be  dull. 
But  write  thy  best,  and  top;  and  in  each  line, 
Sir  Formal's  oratory  will  be  thine: 
Sir  Formal,  though  unsought,  attends  thy 

quill.  MacFlecknoe.  1.  165. 

Fortinbras,  in  Shakespeare's  trag- 
edy, Hamlet,  the  Prince  of  Norway, 
who  at  the  head  of  his  conquering 
army  appears  in  the  last  scene  to  pro- 
nounce a  eulogy  over  Hamlet's 
corpse. 

Fosco,  Count,  in  Wilkie  Collins's 
novel,  The  Woman  in  White  (i860), 
a  plausible  and  ingenious  scoundrel 
of  ItaUan  birth. 

Shortly  after  the  publication  of  The 
Woman  in  White.  Lady  Lytton  had  written 
to  Wilkie  Collins:  "The  great  failure  in 
your  book  is  the  villain;  Count  Fosco  is  a 
very  poor  one,  and  when  next  you  want  a 
character  of  that  sort  I  trust  you  will  not 
disdain  to  come  to  me.  The  man  is  alive 
and  constantly  under  my  gaze.  In  fact,  he 
is  my  own  husband."  This  epistle  was  for- 
warded by  Collins  to  Lytton,  and  could  at 
one  time  be  seen  among  the  Knebworth 
papers." — J.  H.  Escott,  Edward  Bulwer, 
First  Baron  Lytton. 

Fotheringay,  Miss,  in  Thackeray's 
novel.  The  History  of  Pendennis,  the 
stage  name  of  Miss  Emily  Costigan, 
a  beautiful  actress  excellently  drilled 


to  make  a  showing  on  the  stage  but 
languid,  emotionless  and  unintelligent 
in  private  Ufe.  Arthur  Pendennis 
falls  in  love  with  her,  (though  she  is 
twenty-six  and  he  only  eighteen) 
when  she  makes  her  epochal  appear- 
ance in  the  Chatteris  theatre.  Her 
father  encourages  her  to  accept  him 
but  breaks  the  engagement  on  learn- 
ing the  boy  has  no  money.  A  London 
manager  invites  her  to  the  metropolis; 
she  makes  a  great  hit  there,  marries 
the  elderly  Sir  Charles  Mirabel  and 
leaves  the  stage  to  become  an  orna- 
ment to  society.  A  suggested  original 
is  Miss  Eliza  O'Neill,  an  actress  who 
eventually  became  Lady  Becher.  See 
especially  FitzGerald:  The  Garrick 
Club,  pp.  57-176. 

Fountain,  Lucy,  heroine  of  Love  me 
Little,  Love  me  Long  (1857),  a  novel 
by  Charles  Reade;  a  pretty,  freakish, 
emotional  creature,  noble  at  heart 
but  given  to  coquettish  deceits  and 
uncertain  moods  until  steadied  by 
her  love  for  David  Dodd,  whom  she 
marries. 

Fracasse,  Captain  (sometimes 
roughly  Englished  as  Captain  Hurly- 
Burly),  the  stage  name  assumed  by 
the  young  Baron  de  Sicognac  in 
Theophile  Gautier's  novel,  Le  Capi- 
taine  Fracasse  (announced  in  1840; 
not  published  until  1863),  when  he 
joins  a  troupe  of  strolling  actors.  He 
is  partly  impelled  by  love  for  Isabella 
but  partly  by  want,  for  he  is  living 
in  dire  poverty  on  his  ancestral  estate, 
Chateau  de  Misere,  in  Gascony. 

The  novel  presents  the  adventures  of  a 
company  of  strolling  players  of  Louis  XIII's 
time — their  vicissitudes,  collective  and  indi- 
vidual, their  miseries  and  gayeties,  their 
loves  and  squabbles,  and  their  final  appor- 
tionment of  worldly  comfort — very  much 
in  that  symmetrical  fashion  in  which  they 
have  so  often  stood  forth  to  receive  it  at  the 
fall  of  the  curtain.  It  is  a  fairy-tale  of 
Bohemia,  a  triumph  of  the  picturesque.  In 
artistic  "bits,"  of  course,  the  book  abounds; 
it  is  a  delightful  gallery  of  portraits.  The 
models,  with  their  paint  and  pomatum,  their 
broken  plumes  and  threadbare  velvet,  their 
false  finery  and  their  real  hunger,  their  play- 
house manners  and  morals,  are  certainly 
not  very  choice  company;  but  the  author 
handles  them  with  an  affectionate,  sympa- 
thetic jocosity  of  which  we  so  speedily  feel 
the  influence  that,  long  before  we  have 
finished,  we  seem  to  have  drunk  with  them. 


Franceschini 


160 


Fresh 


one  and  all,  out  of  the  playhouse  goblet  to 
the  confusion  of  respectability  and  life  before 
the  scenes. — Henry  James, 

Franceschini,  Guido,  in  Robert 
Browning's  narrative  poem,  The 
Ring  and  the  Book  (1868-1869),  an 
impoverished  nobleman  of  Arezzo, 
tempted  by  a  large  dowry  into  a 
loveless  mesalliance  with  Pompilia. 
She  is  the  putative  child  of  Pietro 
and  Violante,  who,  when  the  aristo- 
crat shows  them  the  cold  shoulder, 
declare  that  Pompilia  was  not  really 
their  child  but  the  offspring  of  a 
Roman  wanton.  Violante,  who  con- 
fessed that  she  had  hatched  the  plot, 
applies  to  the  courts  for  the  return  of 
the  dowry.  Guido's  indifference  to 
his  young  wife  turns  to  hatred;  his 
cruelty  drives  her  to  an  elopement 
with  the  Canon  Giuseppe  Caponsacchi 
{q.v.),  he  pursues  the  fugitives  and  has 
them  arrested.  Caponsacchi  is  sus- 
pended for  three  years.  Pompilia  is 
sent  to  a  convent  but,  when  she 
proves  to  be  with  child,  is  restored  to 
her  putative  parents.  Guido  murders 
all  three.  His  trial  before  the  Pope 
divides  Rome  into  rival  functions, 
one  justifying  Guido,  the  other  insist- 
ing on  the  innocence  of  Pompilia  and 
Caponsacchi. 

Franchi,  Louis,  and  Fabian  de, 
heroes  of  a  drama.  The  Corsican 
Brothers,  which  Boucicault  translated 
from  the  French.  Twin  brothers 
whose  mysterious  sympathies  with 
one  another  create  startling  compli- 
cations. 

Franfois,  hero  of  Dr.  S.  Weir 
Mitchell's  historical  novel,  The  Ad- 
ventures of  Franqois  (1898),  a  street 
arab  adrift  in  Paris  during  the  Terror, 
a  light-hearted,  irresponsible  little 
rascal  who  tells  his  own  story. 

Frankenstein,  in  Mrs.  Shelley's 
fantastic  novel,  Frankenstein,  or  the 
Modern  Prometheus  (18 17),  a  student 
at  the  University  of  Ingoldstadt, 
Genevese  by  birth,  who  from  child- 
hood has  been  obsessed  with  a  morbid 
passion  for  the  occult.  From  frag- 
ments of  bodies  collected  in  church- 
yards and  dissecting  room  he  con- 
structs a  monster  and  animates  it 
with  a  vital  spark  from  heaven.    The 


creature  turns  against  its  creator. 
Huge,  hideous,  soulless,  full  of  animal 
passions,  it  pursues  Frankenstein  and 
every  one  he  loves  to  the  bitter  end. 
It  murders  his  closest  friend,  Henry 
Clerval,  brings  his  adopted  sister, 
Elizabeth,  to  an  untimely  end,  and 
pursues  Frankenstein  himself  from 
land  to  land,  from  sea  to  sea.  Finally, 
on  the  Arctic  Ocean,  the  modem 
Prometheus  breathes  his  last.  And 
over  his  dead  body  hovers  the  horrid 
shape  of  the  man-machine. 

Frankenstein's  Man  Monster,  who 
has  no  other  name,  the  deus  ex  machina 
in  Mrs.  Shelley's  Frankenstein  {supra). 
The  story  of  this  creature  who  can 
find  no  fellowship  among  men,  is 
either  consciously  or  unconsciously 
an  allegorical  portrayal  of  the  char- 
cater  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  who 
in  Alastor  has  painted  himself  as  an 
idealist  isolated  from  human  sym- 
pathy. Helen  Moore  in  her  Life  of 
Mrs.  Shelley  has  a  chapter  on  this 
subject. 

Frederick,  in  Shakespeare's  As  You 
Like  It,  the  usurping  brother  of  the 
exiled  duke,  whom  even  his  daughter 
Celia  calls  a  man  of  harsh  and  envious 
mind.  He  appears  to  be  perpetually 
actuated'by  gloomy  fancies,  suspicion 
and  mistrust.  He  repents  an  d  reforms 
in  the  last  scene,  hands  back  the  duke- 
dom to  the  rightful  heir,  and  retires  to 
a  hermitage. 

Freeport,  Sir  Andrew,  in  Addison's 
and  Steele's  Spectator,  a  member  of 
the  imaginary  Spectator  (q.v.)  club 
represented  as  an  eminent  London 
merchant  of  sense  and  sensibility. 

Fresh,  F.  N.,  hero  of  a  comedy, 
Fresh  the  American  (1881),  by  Archi- 
bald Clavering  Gunter. 

A  member  of  the  New  York  Stock 
Board,  he  is  put  in  the  midst  of 
European  surroundings  and  in  con- 
tact and  contrast  with  European  and 
Oriental  Characters.  Having  made 
millions  he  goes  abroad  to  enjoy 
them.  His  characteristics  are  all 
anti-European.  He  opens  the  play 
by  breaking  the  bank  at  Monte  Carlo; 
travels  through  Europe  in  his  yacht 
Greenback;  thinks  nothing  of  paying 
100,000  francs  for  the  jewels  of  the 


Fribble 


161 


Front  de  Boeuf 


Ex-IQiedive;  slaps  Achmed  Pacha  on 
the  back  and  calls  him  Arch.  His  vir- 
tues are  courage,  generosity,  chivalry 
toward  women,  domesticity  and  hu- 
manity. Any  suggestion  of  cruelty,  par- 
ticularly to  the  weak  and  defenseless, 
arouses  him  to  wrath.  Other  forms  of 
immorality  may  excite  his  curiosity, 
interest  or  sense  of  humor ;  inhumanity 
alone  makes  him  indignant. 

Fribble,  in  Thomas  Shadwell's 
comedy,  Epsom  Wells,  a  haberdasher, 
surly,  inflated,  conceited  and  unduly 
proud  of  his  deceitful  wife,  who  has 
her  own  way  under  an  outer  aspect  of 
submission.  Garrick  borrowed  the 
name  for  a  still  more  popular  char- 
acter in  his  comedy  Miss  in  her  Teens 
(1753).  Here  Fribble  is  a  weak- 
minded  fop  and  mollycoddle,  com- 
plaining of  weak  nerves,  deeply  inter- 
ested in  all  the  details  of  female  dress, 
and  learned  in  pastes  and  cosmetics. 

Friday,  or  Man  Friday,  in  Defoe's 
novel,  Robinson  Crusoe,  the  aborigi- 
nal attendant,  and  for  a  considerable 
period  the  sole  companion,  of  Crusoe 
on  his  iminhabited  island.  He  was  so 
named  after  the  day  of  the  week  on 
which  his  master  has  saved  him  from 
being  killed  and  eaten  by  his  cannibal 
foemen  and  fellow-savages. 

Friday  is  no  real  savage,  but  a  good 
English  servant  without  plush.  He  says 
muchee  and  speakee.  but  he  becomes  at  once 
a  civilized  being  and  in  his  first  conversation 
puzzles  Crusoe  terribly  by  that  awkward 
theological  question,  why  God  did  not  kill 
the  devil — for,  characteristically  enough, 
Crusoe's  first  lesson  includes  a  little  in- 
struction upon  the  enemy  of  mankind.  He 
found,  however,  that  it  was  not  so  easy  to 
imprint  right  notions  in  Friday's  mind 
about  the  devil  as  it  was  about  the  being  of 
a  God. 

Fridolm,  in  Schiller's  ballad,  The 
Message  to  the  Ford  (Ger.  Der  Gang- 
nach  den  Eisenhammer) ,  a  handsome 
page  in  the  service  of  Countess 
Savem.  Robert,  the  envious  hunts- 
man, maligns  him  and  her  to  the 
Coimt.  The  latter  gives  orders  to 
the  workmen  at  the  forge  that  they 
shall  cast  into  the  furnace  the  first 
person  who  puts  to  them  the  ques- 
tion, "  Have  you  fulfilled  the  master's 
order?  "  Fridolin,  the  destined  vic- 
tim, is  delayed  on  his  way  and  Robert, 


hurrying  to  find  if  his  vengeance  has 
been  gratified,  is  hurled  into  the 
flames. 

Frietchie,  Barbara,  titular  heroine 
of  a  war  ballad  by  J.  G.  Whittier 
(1863),  based  on  the  reported  patri- 
otic act  of  a  woman  at  Frederick, 
Maryland,  when  that  city  was  occu- 
pied, September  6, 1862,  by  Confeder- 
ates under  "  Stonewall  "  Jackson. 
Whittier  received  the  story  from  Mrs. 
E.  D.  E.  N.  Southworth,  but  he  sub- 
sequently acknowledged  that  not  the 
aged  Mrs.  Frietchie,  but  the  compara- 
tively young  Mrs.  Mary  A.  Quantrell, 
raised  a  Union  flag  on  her  house  when 
Jackson  and  his  men  marched  by. 
She  was  not  molested.  Some  of  the 
officers  raised  their  hats  to  her  saying, 
*'  To  you,  madam,  not  to  your  flag." 
Barbara  Frietchie,  however,  did  fol- 
low Mrs.  Quantrell's  example  when, 
six  days  later,  the  Federal  troops 
under  Bumside  passed  her  house. 
She  was  then  ninety-six  years  old. 
See  American  Notes  and  Queries, 
October  6,  1888. 

Frollo,  Archdeacon  Claude,  in 
Victor  Hugo's  novel,  Notre  Dame,  and 
in  all  the  plays,  burlesques  and  operas 
based  upon  it,  a  fanatic  priest  so  ab- 
sorbed in  his  search  for  the  philoso- 
pher's stone  that  he  can  think  of 
nothing  else  until  his  eye  falls  upon 
Esmeralda  when  he  loses  all  control 
over  his  carnal  desires  and,  forfeiting 
all  claims  to  sanctity,  pursues  her  to 
her  death  and  his.    See  Quasimodo. 

Fromme,  Ethan,  hero  of  a  novel  of 
that  title  (191 1)  by  Edith  Wharton, 
a  young  farmer  in  Connecticut.  He  is 
tied  to  a  wife  seven  years  older  than 
himself,  a  bleak  New  England  woman, 
stem,  silent,  unyielding,  domineering. 
She  discerns  that  he  is  in  love  with 
her  orphaned  niece  who  forms  the 
third  member  of  the  household,  and 
her  jealous  harshness .  compels  a 
terrible  catastrophe. 

Front  de  Boeuf,  Sir  Reginald,  in 
Scott's  romance,  Ivanhoe,  a  follower 
of  Prince  John,  a  Norman  noble, 
"  very  big  and  very  fierce,"  whose 
life  "  had  been  spent  in  public  war 
or  in  private  feuds  and  broils."  He 
lent    his   castle   of   Torquilstone   to 


Frontoni 


162 


Fudge  Family 


Brian  de  Bois-Guilbert  and  Maurice 
de  Bracy  for  the  imprisonment  of 
Cedric  and  his  party.  Wounded  when 
defending  the  castle  against  the 
Black  Knight's  attack,  he  died  in  the 
ruins,  forgotten  by  all  but  Ulrica,  his 
old  time  mistress. 

Frontoni,  Jacopo,  hero  of  J.  Feni- 
more  Cooper's  romance  of  Venetian 
life.  The  Bravo,  a  young  man  of 
unblemished  character  who  in  the 
hope  of  rescuing  his  father — falsely 
imprisoned  by  the  Senate — consents 
to  assume  the  character  and  bear  the 
odium  of  a  public  bravo  or  assassin. 

Froth,  Lord  and  Lady,  in  William 
Congreve's  comedy.  The  Douhle- 
Dealer  (1693) — he  all  devotion  to 
fashion  and  she  to  learning — ^form  a 
well-contrasted  couple. 

Lady  Froth,  the  charming  young  blue- 
stocking, with  her  wit  and  her  pedantry,  her 
affectation  and  her  merry  vitality,  is  one  of 
the  best  and  most  complex  characters  that 
Congreve  has  created. — E.  W.  GossE, 

Frou-Frou  (a  French  word  denoting 
the  rustling  of  silks  and  other  stiiffs), 
the  nickname  of  Gilberte  Brigard, 
heroine  of  T^roM-i^fow,  a  five-act  drama 
in  prose  by  Henri  Meilhac  and  Ludo- 
vic  Hal^vy,  produced  with  great 
success  at  the  Gymnase  in  Paris, 
October  30,  1869,  and  subsequently 
reproduced  in  almost  every  European 
language.  Charles  Yriarte  had  given 
the  nickname  Frou-Frou  to  a  char- 
acter described  in  his  Parisian  Life 
{La   Vie  Parisienne). 

Gilberte,  frivolous,  light-hearted 
and  fascinating,  has  earned  her  nick- 
name from  the  perpetual  rustling  of 
her  dresses  as  she  skips  and  dances 
about.  She  is  sought  in  marriage  by 
the  staid  and  sensible  M.  de  Sarboris, 
with  whom  her  elder  sister  Louise  is 
secretly  in  love.  Louise,  ever  willing 
to  sacrifice  herself  for  her  motherless 
sister,  counsels  acceptance.  Frou- 
Frou  agrees,  though  indifferent  to 
him  and  indeed  indifferent  to  every- 
thing save  her  own  pleasures.  After 
marriage  she  neglects  home,  husband 
and  child  for  a  round  of  social  frivol- 
ity. Sartoris  induces  Louise  to  come 
and  live  with  them  and  take  charge 
of  the  household.    For  some  time  this 


arrangement  seems  to  give  general 
satisfaction.  Suddenly  Frou-Frou  is 
brought  to  her  senses  by  the  appear- 
ance of  a  lover  whom  she  vaguely 
likes.  Appalled  at  her  danger,  she 
turns  back  to  her  domestic  duties. 
But  she  cannot  change  the  result  of 
years.  Louise  has  innocently  sup- 
planted her  in  the  affections  of  her 
husband  and  her  child.  After  a  brief 
struggle  to  regain  what  she  has  lost 
she  turns  in  a  frenzy  of  jealousy  upon 
her  sister. 

"  You  have  taken  from  me  my 
home,  my  husband,  my  child,"  she 
cries,  "  well  then,  take  everything!  " 

Rushing  from  the  house  she  joins 
her  lover  in  Venice.  The  brilliant 
comedy  now  degenerates  into  ordi- 
nary melodrama.  Sartoris  follows 
Frou-Frou  to  Venice  and  kills  the 
lover,  and  in  the  fifth  act  the  repentant 
Frou-Frou  comes  home  to  die,  to  crave 
forgiveness,  and  to  obtain  from  her 
husband  a  promise  to  marry  Louise. 

Frugal,  Luke,  in  Massinger's  com- 
edy. The  City  Madam  (1632),  a 
ruined  spendthrift  supported  on  the 
charity  of  his  brother.  Sir  John  Fru- 
gal, and  ostensibly  a  meek  and  oily- 
tongued  dependent.  Sir  John,  feign- 
ing retirement  into  a  convent,  puts 
him  in  possession  of  all  his  property, 
when  he  changes  into  a  monster  of 
selfish  avarice  and  cruelty,  consenting 
even  to  send  his  sister-in-law  and  her 
daughters  to  Virginia  to  be  sacrificed 
to  the  devil.  His  brief  dream  of 
wealth  and  power  collapses,  and  Lady 
Frugal  and  her  daughters  are  effectu- 
ally cured  of  their  affectations  and 
pretensions. 

Fudge  Family,  in  a  series  of  satirical 
epistles  in  verse.  The  Fudge  Family 
Abroad,  by  Thomas  Moore,  consists 
of  Phil  Fudge,  Esq.,  a  parvenu 
Englishman  of  Irish  descent,  hack- 
writer, spy  and  Bourbon  sympathizer, 
his  son  Robert,  his  daughter  Biddy 
and  a  poor  relation,  Phelim  Conner, 
who  as  an  ardent  Bonapartist  and  an 
Irish  patriot  acts  as  a  foil  to  the  over- 
wrought cockney  enthusiasms,  preju- 
dices and  misunderstandings  of  his 
kin.  The  quartette  visit  Paris  just 
after  the  fall  of  Bonaparte  and  reveal 


Fulkerson 


163 


Galeota 


their  characters  in  the  self-told  stories 
of  their  adventures  abroad. 

Fulkerson,  in  W.  D.  Howells's  A 
Hazard  of  New  Fortunes  (1889),  a 
Western  man  who  comes  to  New  York 
to  exploit  a  great  idea — "  the  greatest 
idea  that  has  been  struck  since  the 
creation  of  man.  I  don't  want  to 
claim  too  much,  and  I  draw  the  line 
at  the  creation  of  man.  But  if  you 
want  to  ring  the  morning  stars  into 
the  prospectus,  all  right!  "  The  idea 
takes  shape  in  Every  Other  Saturday, 
a  fortnightly  periodical  financed  by 
Jacob  Dryfoos. 


He  is  the  flower  of  Western  audacity, 
shrewdness,  and  optimism  transplanted  to 
New  York.  Daring  schemes  are  his  inspira- 
tion. There  is  just  the  touch  of  charlatan- 
ism about  him  which,  in  the  right  environ- 
ment, would  make  him  a  showman.  But 
you  are  not  offended,  because  he  has  a  fine 
genial  way  of  taking  you  into  his  confidence 
and  showing  you  the  beauties  of  the  joke. — 
N.  Y.  Life. 

Fuzzy- Wuzzy,  hero  of  one  of  the 
Barrack  Room  Ballads  of  Rudyard 
Kipling,  ^  in  which  Tommy  Atkins 
voices  his  admiration  for  the  "  big, 
black,  bounding  beggar "  in  the 
Soudan  expeditionary  force  who 
fought  and  broke  the  square. 


Gabler,  Hedda,  heroine  of  Ibsen's 
drama  of  that  name. 

I  am  wholly  in  agreement  with  Mr. 
Archer  when  he  says  that  he  finds  it  impos- 
sible to  extract  any  sort  of  general  idea  from 
Hedda  Gabler,  or  to  accept  it  as  a  satire  of 
any  condition  of  society.  Hedda  is  an  indi- 
vidual, not  a  type,  and  it  was  as  an  individ- 
ual that  she  interested  Ibsen.  We  have  been 
told,  since  the  poet's  death,  that  he  was 
greatly  struck  by  the  case  which  came  under 
his  notice  at  Munich  of  a  German  lady  who 
poisoned  herself  because  she  was  bored  with 
life,  and  had  strayed  into  a  false  position. 
Hedda  Gabler  is  the  realization  of  such  an 
individual  case. — E.  W.  GossE :  Ibsen ,  p.  19 1 . 

Gabrielle,  heroine  and  title  of  a 
five-act  comedy  in  verse  (1849)  by 
Emile  Augier.  The  wife  of  Julien 
Chabriere,  she  finds  life  a  blank 
because  that  honest,  hard-working 
attorney  is  only  a  good  husband  and 
a  good  father,  not  a  hero.  In  his 
secretary,  Stephen,  she  finds  an  ideal 
who  is  willing  to  fill  the  void  in  her 
life.  The  husband,  warned  in  time, 
appears  on  the  scene  when  the  two 
are  together,  and  with  pathetic  elo- 
quence adjures  his  wife  to  restore  him 
her  love,  to  save  her  honor,  to  protect 
her  child.  His  speech  acts  as  a  revela- 
tion. The  wife  sees  her  husband  in  a 
new  light.  She  contrasts  his  frank- 
ness, his  tenderness,  his  generosity, 
with  the  pusillanimity  of  her  lover. 
She  dismisses  the  latter,  seizes  the 
hand  of  Julien,  and  the  curtain  goes 
down  as  she  utters  the  line  which 
forms  the  keynote  of  the  play, 


Oh  pfere  de  famille,  oh  poete,  je  t'aimel 

This  artistic  rehabilitation  of  the 
household,  this  effort  to  set  a  halo 
round  the  bold  pate  of  paterfamilias, 
came  upon  the  Parisian  playgoers 
with  all  the  delighted  surprise  of  a 
new  sensation. 

Galatea,  in  William  S.  Gilbert's 
comedy,  Pygmalion  and  Galatea 
(1871),  the  statue  carved  by  Pygma- 
lion (g.v.),  which  at  his  earnest  prayer 
became  animated. 

Galeoto,  The  Great,  in  Jose  Esche- 
gary's  tragedy  of  that  name  (188 1), 
a  sort  of  personification  of  public 
gossip,  more  terrific  than  the  English 
Mrs.  Grundy  because  placed  in  the 
more  emotional  medium  of  the  Span- 
ish race.  In  Dante's  Inferno,  Fran- 
cesca  da  Rimini  says  that  Galeoto 
was  the  book  which  prompted  her 
and  Paolo  to  sin  (see  Galeoto  and 
Rimini,  Francesca  di,  in  Volume 
ii).  Eschegary  tells  how  Julian's 
young  wife,  thrown  into  daily  con- 
tact with  Ernest,  her  husband's 
secretary  and  adopted  son,  becomes, 
though  guiltless,  the  object  of  sus- 
picion and  slander.  Julian  turns  a 
deaf  ear  at  first  to  all  gossip  but 
finally  fights  a  duel  in  vindication  of 
his  honor  and  is  borne  dying  to 
Ernest's  chamber.  There  he  finds 
his  wife  and,  despite  her  asservations 
of  innocence,  he  expires  in  the  belief 
that  she  is  guilty.  Ernest  kills  his 
slayer,  and  cries  as  the  ctirtain  falls, 


Gallagher 


164 


Garcias 


"  This  woman  is  mine.  The  world 
has  so  decreed  and  I  accept  the 
world's  decision.  It  has  driven  her  to 
my  arms.  You  cast  her  forth.  We 
obey  you.  But  should  anybody  ask 
who  was  the  go-between  in  this  busi- 
ness you  should  say,  '  Ourselves,  all 
unwilling,  and  the  stupid  chatter  of 
gossip.'  " 

Gsdlagher,  hero  and  title  of  a  short 
story  (1891)  by  Richard  Harding 
Davis,  an  impish  Irish-American 
office  boy  on  a  daily  paper.  In  an 
exciting  episode  he  runs  to  earth  the 
criminal  whom  all  the  reporters  are 
after. 

Gama,  Vasco  da,  the  great  Portu- 
guese explorer  (1469-1524),  is  the 
hero  of  Camoen's  epic.  The  Lusiad, 
which  deals  with  his  exploit  in  round- 
ing the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  dis- 
covering the  ocean  passage  to  the 
Indies.  Here  the  hero  is  exalted  into 
a  demigod.  Indeed  he  is  so  obviously 
the  favorite  of  heaven  that  his  deeds 
are  minimized  by  the  very  power 
which  smiles  upon  and  smooths  his 
path.  Not  a  hair  of  his  head  is  ever 
in  real  danger  of  being  singed.  The 
elements  are  lashed  into  their  angriest 
moods  only  to  waft  the  new  Ulysses 
in  triumph  to  his  port.  The  great 
gods,  with  Venus  at  their  head,  com- 
bine against  the  hostile  might  of 
Neptune.  Spirits  of  wind  and  wave 
sport  before  his  prow,  and  ease  the 
shock  of  impinging  billows.  The 
stars  in  their  courses  fight  only  for 
the  honor  of  guiding  his  bark  onward. 
So  extreme  a  panegyric  was  bound  to 
create  reaction,  and  the  facts  brought 
out  by  recent  research  have  done 
much  to  reduce  the  hero  of  this 
modem  Odyssey  nearer  to  the  ordin- 
ary level.  Yet  they  prove  him  to  have 
been  no  common  man. 

Game  Chicken,  The,  in  Dickens' 
Dombey  and  Son,  a  professional  boxer 
and  prize-fighter,  with  very  short 
hair,  a  broken  nose,  and  a  considera- 
ble tract  of  bare  and  sterile  country 
behind  each  ear.  He  is  a  friend  of 
Mr.  Toots,  whom  he  knocks  about 
the  head  three  times  a  week  for  the 
small  consideration  of  ten  and  six  per 
visit. 


Gammon,  Oily,  in  Samuel  Warren's 
novel.  Ten  Thousand  a  Year,  a  slimy, 
slippery,  hypocritical  solicitor  who 
takes  up  Tittlebat  Titmouse's  claim 
to  a  fortune. 

Gamp,  Mrs.  Sarah,  in  Dickens's 
novel,  Martin  Chuzzlewit,  an  unpro- 
fessional nurse  who  is  ever  ready  to 
hire  herself  out  in  many  capacities  for 
which  she  is  scantily  fitted  by  nature 
and  training — monthly  nurse,  sick 
nurse  or  layer-out  of  the  dead.  "  She 
was  a  fat  old  woman  with  a  husky 
voice  and  a  moist  eye.  She  wore  a 
very  rusty  black  gown,  rather  the 
worse  for  snuff,  and  a  shawl  and  bon- 
net to  correspond.  The  face  of  Mrs. 
Gamp — the  nose  in  particular — was 
somewhat  red  and  swollen  and  it  was 
difficult  to  enjoy  her  society  without 
becoming  conscious  of  a  smell  of 
spirits  "  (Chap.  xix).  See  Harris, 
Mrs. 

Gander  cleugh,  an  imaginary  town 
situated  on  the  imaginary  river  Gan- 
der in  the  central  part,  the  navel,  of 
Scotland,  the  residence  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  Jedediah  Cleishbotham. 

Ganderetta,  heroine  of  Somerville's 
burlesque  poem  Hohhinol  (g.o.). 

Bright  Ganderetta  tripped  the  jovial  queen 
Of  Maia's  joyous  month  profuse  in  flowers. 

Gann,  Caroline  Brandenberg,  the 

unfortunate  heroine  of  Thackeray's 
novelette,  A  Shabby  Genteel  Story, 
who  afterwards  appears  as  Mrs. 
Brandon  ("  the  Little  Sister  ")  in  The 
Adventures  of  Philip.  In  the  novel- 
ette, Caroline,  Cinderella  of  a  vulgar 
household,  falls  victim  to  a  mock 
marriage  contrived  by  her  libertine 
lover,  "Mr.  Brandon."  The  latter 's 
real  name  was  Brand  Firmin,  he  rises 
to  be  a  great  doctor  in  the  novel  and 
is  the  father  of  Philip.  Mrs.  Brandon 
having  become  a  nurse,  known  famil- 
iarly as  "  The  Little  Sister,"  meets 
him  again  in  the  course  of  her  pro- 
fessional duties,  but  forgives  him  and 
spares  him  all  humiliation  for  the 
sake  of  the  great  love  she  bears  to 
Philip. 

Garcias,  Pedro,  a  licentiate  referred 
to  in  the  preface  to  Le  Sage's  Gil  Bias, 
which  tells  how  two  scholars  at  Sala- 


Gardiner 


165 


Garland 


manca  discovered  a  tombstone  in- 
scribed, "  Here  lies  interred  the  soul 
of  the  licentiate  Pedro  Garcias,"  and 
dug  up  a  leathern  purse  containing 
a  hundred  ducats. 

Gardiner,  Sir  Christopher,  hero  of 
Longfellow's  Rhyme  of  Sir  Christopher 
Gardiner  in  the  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn 
(1873),  was  a  historical  character  of 
mysterious  origin  who  in  the  early 
seventeenth  century  flashed  across  the 
monotonous  stage  of  New  England, 
mingling  for  a  while  with  the  prosaic 
life  of  the  seaboard  settlements  with 
an  equally  mysterious  female  com- 
panion, and  then  disappeared  forever. 

Such  melodramatic  personages  are  not 
common  in  Massachusetts  history,  and 
accordingly  Sir  Christopher  long  since 
attracted  the  notice  of  the  writers  of  fiction. 
t;  Here  were  great  possibilities.  And  so  as 
'■:  early  as  1827  Miss  Sedgwick  introduced  him, 
under  the  name  of  Sir  Philip  Gardiner,  into 
her  novel  of  Hope  Leslie.  He  Is  the  walking 
villain  of  that  now-forgotten  tale.  The  his- 
torian Motley  next  tried  his  hand  upon  him 
in  his  story  of  Merrymount,  published  in 
1849.  Then,  in  1856,  Mr.  John  T.  Adams, 
the  writer  of  several  historical  romances, 
went  over  the  ground  once  more  in  his 
Knight  of  the  Golden  Melice.  Finally,  in 
1873.  Longfellow  put  the  Rhyme  of  Sir 
Christopher  Gardiner  in  the  mouth  of  the 
landlord  as  the  last  of  the  Tales  of  a  Wayside 
Inn.  Both  Motley  and  Adams,  as  well  as 
Longfellow,  present  the  knight  under  his 
.  own  name,  and,  so  to  speak,  in  his  proper 
person.  They  adhere  more  or  less  to  the 
record,  which  Miss  Sedgwick  does  not. 
They  have  all,  however,  made  somewhat 
droll  work  with  the  facts  of  history. — 
Harper's  Magazine. 

Gargantua,  a  traditional  French 
giant  whom  Rabelais  made  the  hero 
of  Book  I  in  a  huge  satirical  work, 
The  Life  of  Gargantua  and  Pantagruel 
(1832).  He  and  the  book  in  which 
he  is  celebrated  were  apparently  an 
afterthought,  for  Book  I  was  pub- 
lished after  the  appearance  of  Book 
II,  and  only  in  the  completed  re- 
issue did  it  take  its  now  accepted 
precedence. 

^  Gargantua  is  the  gigantic  heir  to  a 
gigantic  race,  and  his  birth  is  cele- 
brated by  a  tremendous  feast,  a  bur- 
lesque of  unlimited  trencher  work. 
His  education  involves  a  satire  on  the 
monastic  and  pedantic  systems  taught 
in  the  schools,  from  which  his  father 
Grandgousier  withdraws  him  to  place 


him  under  Ponocrates  and  Panurge. 
The  first  teaches  him  the  value  of 
labor;  the  second  introduces  him  to 
the  world  of  bohemian  delights.  Gar- 
gantua is  recalled  from  Paris  when 
war  breaks  out  between  Grandgousier 
and  Picrochole.  Though  Picrochole 
is  defeated,  our  hero  learns  a  useful 
lesson  about  the  horrors  of  blood- 
shed. He  founds  the  Abbey  of  The- 
lema  as  a  protest  against  both  war 
and  monasticism. 

Gargery,  Joe,  in  Dickens'  Great 
Expectations,  a  blacksmith,  blunder- 
ing, ungrammatical  and  overgrown,  a 
kind  of  domestic  Titan,  helpless  in 
speech  and  of  no  education,  but  pa- 
thetic from  his  affectionate  fidelity, 
and  almost  sublime  through  the  naked 
instinct  of  duty. 

Joe  Gargery  is  one  of  a  large  class  of 
characters  which  Dickens  delighted  to 
create — men  in  whom  solid  integrity  of 
heart  and  conduct  can  find  no  adequate  ex- 
pression through  the  brain  and  the  tongue. 
His  brain  can  only  stutter  when  his  heart 
swells  to  its  utmost  capacity;  and  his  favor- 
ite expression,  "which  I  meantersay,"  is 
more  eloquent  than  the  lucid  sayings  of  less 
simple  and  noble  natures.  Dickens  was  so 
captivated  by  Joe  Gargery  that  he  under- 
took the  task  of  devising  a  new  language 
for  him,  governed  by  a  novel  grammar,  and 
with  rules  for  the  construction  of  sentences 
which  must  naturally  surprise  the  student 
of  Blair,  Kaimes,  Campbell,  or  Whately. — 
E.  P.  Whipple. 

Gargery,  Mrs.  Georgiana  Maria, 
Joe's  wife;  sister  to  Pip,  and  a  thor- 
ough shrew. 

Garland,  Anne,  a  miller's  daughter, 
heroine  of  Thomas  Hardy's  novel. 
The  Trumpet  Major  (1880).  Though 
personally  lovely  and  attractive, 
though  amiable,  innocent,  generous 
and  tender-hearted,  she  makes  sad 
havoc  of  the  heart  of  a  worthy  man, 
not  wilfully  but  by  dint  of  her  inborn, 
involuntary,  unconscious,  emotional 
organism.  She  recognizes  John  Love- 
day's  goodness,  his  self-abnegation, 
his  lovableness,  and  she  can  no  more 
justify  herself  in  not  loving  him  than 
she  can  in  loving  his  scamp  of  a 
brother.  Bob.  Despite  all  considera- 
tions of  self-respect,  gratitude  and 
expediency,  she  marries  Bob  and 
sends  John  to  die  on  a  Spanish  battle- 
field. 


Garland 


166 


Gaviota 


Garland,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  novel, 
Old  Curiosity  Shop,  a  fat,  kindly  little 
man  who  befriends  Kit  Nubbles  and 
takes  him  into  his  service.  His  wife 
and  his  son  Abel  are  as  placid  and 
kindly  as  himself. 

Garth,  Caleb,  in  George  Eliot's 
novel,  Middletnarch,  a  strong,  silent, 
capable  man,  father  of  Mary  Garth. 
As  in  the  case  of  Adam  Bede,  George 
Eliot  found  the  suggestion  of  Caleb's 
character  in  her  own  father. 

Mary  Garth  and  Fred  Vlncy,  the  shrewd 
young  woman  and  the  feeble  young  gentle- 
man whom  she  governs,  do  not  carry  us 
away,  and  Caleb  Garth,  though  he  is  partly 
drawn  from  the  same  original  as  Adam  Bede, 
is  unimpeachable  but  a  faint  duplicate  of 
his  predecessor. — SiR  Leslie  Stephen: 
George  Eliot. 

Garulilies,  a  nonsense  word  in- 
vented by  Samuel  Foote.  See  Pan- 
jandrum. 

Gas,  Charlatan,  in  Disraeli's  novel, 
Vivien^  Grey,  an  empty  but  noisy 
politician  who  is  supposed  to  be 
drawn  from  Canning. 

Gascoigne,  Sir  William,  Lord  Chief 
Justice  of  England  under  Henry  IV 
and  Henry  V,  appears  in  Shake- 
speare's historical  play,  //  Henry  IV. 
One  of  the  legends  concerning  wild 
Prince  Hal  is  that  he  gave  the  justice 
a  cufiE  on  the  ear  and  was  sent  to  prison 
for  it  by  Sir  William.  In  Act  V,  Sc.  2 
the  story  is  alluded  to  as  a  fact  by  the 
justice;  he  defends  his  action  and  is 
unexpectedly  praised  for  it  and  re- 
tained in  office  by  the  young  king. 

Gastibelza,  the  Madman  of  Toledo, 
hero  of  a  ballad  by  Victor  Hugo  in- 
cluded in  Les  Rayons  et  les  Ombres 
(1840).  Gastibelza,  **  the  man  with 
the  rifle,"  crazed  by  the  perfidy  of 
Donna  Sabine,  shouts  his  despair  to 
the  winds  in  words  **  in  which  all  the 
sweet  and  bitter  madness  of  love, 
strong  as  death  is  distilled  into  death- 
less speech "  (Swinburne).  The 
poem  was  set  to  music  by  Hippolyte 
Monpou,  and  Roger's  singing  carried 
it  into  all  the  saloons  and  concerts  of 
Paris.  An  opera  called  Gastibelza  was 
founded  on  the  ballad  by  Dennery 
and  Corman,  with  music  by  Maillart 
and  produced  at  the  Op6ra  National 
in  Paris,  November  15,  1847. 


Gaunt,  Griffith,  in  Charles  Reade's 
novel  of  that  name  (1867),  a  poor 
young  Englishman  who  has  married 
Catherine  Pe5rton,  an  heiress  and  a 
devout  Catholic.  He  develops  an 
unreasonable  jealousy  for  her  spiritual 
adviser.  Father  Leonard,  and  leaving 
his  home  in  high  dudgeon  is  nursed 
through  a  dangerous  illness  by  Mercy 
Vint,  an  innkeeper's  daughter,  whom 
he  marries  under  the  name  of  his 
illegitimate  half-brother  and  physical 
double,  Thomas  Leicester.  The  latter 
discovers  his  crime  and  denounces 
him  to  Mrs.  Gaunt.  There  is  a  terri- 
ble scene  between  them.  Gaunt  dis- 
appears, a  body  supposed  to  be  his  is 
found  in  the  mere  near  his  house,  and 
Mrs.  Gaunt,  arrested  and  tried  for 
his  murder,  might  have  been  con- 
victed, but  Mercy  appears  and  proves 
that  Gaunt  is  still  alive  and  that  the 
body  is  Leicester's.  The  novel  was 
dramatized  by  Daly  in  1866  and  later 
by  the  author  himself  under  the  title 
of  Jealousy. 

Gauthier,  Marguerite,  the  heroine 
of  the  younger  Dumas'  novel  and 
drama  La  Dame  aux  Camelias  (known 
in  this  country  as  Camille)  was  drawn 
from  a  real  personage, — Madeleine 
Duplessis,  a  well-known  leader  of  the 
demi-monde  in  Paris,  who  amid  all 
the  errors  of  her  life  preserved  the 
grace  of  shame  and  a  yearning  after 
a  better  life.  Margu6rite's  youth,  her 
beauty,  the  malady  that  preyed  upon 
her  life,  the  efiforts  of  an  aged  noble- 
man to  save  her  from  her  degradation 
on  account  of  her  startling  likeness  to 
his  dead  daughter,  are  all  facts  in  the 
career  of  the  real  woman. 

Gaviota,  La  (Sp.,  The  Sea-gull)  in 
Fernan  Caballero's  novel  of  that 
name  (1851),  is  the  nickname  of  the 
heroine  Marisalada.  A^  fisherman's 
daughter,  dowered  _  with  bizarre 
beauty  and  an  exquisite  voice,  she 
captures  the  love  of  a  young  German 
named  Stein,  who  finds  his  way  to  her 
village,  he  teaches  her  music  and 
develops  her  voice,  but  though  she 
marries  him  she  feels  nothing  higher 
than  friendliness  for  him;  indeed  she 
has  been  actually  repelled  by  his 
midnight  wooings  and  talk  of  **  the 


Gavroche 


167 


Gellatley 


infinite."  Chance  carries  the  couple 
to  Seville,  where  Maria  sings  in  the 
opera  with  extraordinary  success,  and 
where  she  falls  disastrously  in  love 
with  Pepe  Vera,  a  matador  in  the 
bull-ring.  The  story  ends^  as  such  a 
story  would  naturally  end  in  real  life, 
and  the  last  impression  is  the  cry  of 
the  teasing  dwarf  who  first  gave  the 
nickname, — "  Gaviota  fuistes,  Gaviota 
tresy  Gaviota  serdsl"  As  applied  to 
Marisalada,  the  nickname  points  to 
one  of  those  harsh,  angular,  unsym- 
pathetic natures  which,  when  armed 
with  beauty  or  some  powerful  natural 
gift,  seem  made  for  the  torture  of 
those  most  intimately  concerned  with 
them. 

Gavroche,  in  Victor  Hugo's  Les 
Miser aUeSy  vol.  x  (1863),  the  repre- 
sentative street  gamin  of  Paris,  whose 
doughty  deeds  and  death  in  the  barri- 
cades of  Paris  in  1832  are  perhaps 
exaggerated,  but  whose  impish  love 
of  mischief,  ready  flow  of  "  chaff," 
native  kindliness  and  imselfishness 
are  vividly  presented. 

Gawrey,  in  Robert  Pultock's  ro- 
mance, Peter  Wilkins  (1750),  the 
name  given  to  the  flying  women 
among  whom  the  hero  is  accidentally 
thrown,  after  being  shipwrecked.   See 

YOUWARKEE. 

Gawtrey,  Stephen,  in  Lord  Lytton's 
Night  and  Morning,  a  character  illus- 
trating the  force  of  circumstances  in 
driving  a  man  of  strong  passions,  but 
naturally  honest  disposition,  to  com- 
mit offences  against  society  and  its 
laws. 

Gay,Lucien,in  Disraeli's  Coningsby, 
is  intended  for  Theodore  Hook. 

Gay,  Walter,  in  Dickens's  Dombey 
and  Son,  a  yoimg  man  in  the  employ 
of  Mr.  Dombey;  nephew  to  Sol  Gills. 
He  falls  in  love  with  Florence  Dom- 
bey, but  is  soon  afterward  sent  to 
Barbadoes  to  fill  a  junior  situation  in 
the  counting-house  there.  The  ship 
is  lost  at  sea,  and  it  is  long  thought 
that  he  went  down  with  her;  but  he 
finally  returns  and  marries  Florence. 

Very  lovable  Is  Walter  Gay,  cheerful  and 
merry,  with  his  fair  face,  bright  eyes,  and 
curly  hair.  How  he  lights  up  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  old  Instrument  maker's  shop, 


where  in  ten  days  but  two  people  had  called 
— the  man  who  came  to  ask  for  change  for  a 
sovereign,  and  the  woman  who  wanted  to 
know  the  way  to  Mile  End  turnpike.  The 
good  boys  of  fiction  are  too  often  uninter- 
esting, but  this  charge  cannot  be  urged 
against  old  Solomon  Gill's  nephew.  'The 
frank  ingenuousness  of  his  nature,  added  to 
a  spice  of  romance  and  a  love  of  the  marvel- 
lous, forms  a  combination  which  must  win 
all  hearts,  let  alone  that  of  Florence  Dom- 
bey. And  without  "Wal'r,"  how  forlorn  a 
figure  would  be  Captain  Cuttle. — Pall  Mall 
Budget. 

Gaylord,  Marcia,  in  Howells's 
novel,  A  Modern  Instance,  the  New 
England  country  girl  who  is  wooed 
and  won  by  Bartley  Hubbard,  only 
to  be  forsaken  when  dissipation  gets 
him  into  financial  and  domestic 
troubles.  Beautiful  but  slightly  vul- 
gar, jealous,  passionate  and  vindic- 
tive, yet  preserving  her  innocence 
against  temptation,  she  is  the  product 
of  a  soil  where  religion  has  run  to  seed 
and  men  and  women  are  living  by 
traditions  which  have  faded  into  a 
copybook  morality. 

Gebir,  in  Landor*s  poem  of  that 
name  (1797),  an  Iberian  prince,  sover- 
eign of  what  is  now  Gibraltar.  His 
father  had  imposed  upon  him  a 
solemn  oath  to  conquer  Egypt,  which 
had  been  wrested  from  their  ances- 
tors. Gebir,  however,  falls  in  love 
with  Charoba,  the  youthful  Queen  of 
Egypt,  marries  her,  and  dies  on  the 
wedding  day  through  the  agency  of  a 
poisoned  shirt  (see  Nessus)  with 
which  he  had  been  treacherously 
invested.  The  subject  of  this  poem 
was  suggested  to  Landor  by  a  chapter 
in  a  story  by  Clara  Reeve.  Its  moral 
aim  is  to  rebuke  warlike  ambition  and 
to  extol  the  more  durable  victories  of 
peace  in  the  respective  persons  of  Gebir 
and  his  shepherd  brother,  Tamar. 

Geierstein,  Anne  of,  heroine  of 
Scott's  historical  novel  of  that  name 
(1829),  the  daughter  of  Count  Albert 
of  Geierstein,  president  of  the  secret 
tribunal  of  Westphalia.  Known  popu- 
larly as  "the  Maiden  of  the  Mist," 
she  did  not  hesitate  to  disabuse  the 
mind  of  Sir  Arthur  de  Vere  of  the 
"  absurd  report "  concerning  her  sup- 
posed supernatural  powers. 

Gellatley,  Davie,  in  Scott's  Waver- 
ley,  an  "  innocent,"  dependent  on  the 


General 


168 


Geraldine 


charity  of  the  Baron  of  Bradwardine. 
"Simply  a  crack-brained  knave,  who 
could  execute  very  well  any  commis- 
sion which  jumped  with  his  own 
humour,  and  made  his  folly  a  plea 
for  avoiding  every  other."  He  was 
avowedly  drawn  from  a  local  celebrity 
known  as  Jock  Gray. 

Jock,  or  John,  Gray  was  by  no  means  so 
"daft"  as  the  Davie  Gellatley  of  Waver  ley. 
He  lived  at  a  place  in  the  south  of  Scotland 
called  Gilmanscleugh,  and  is  said  to  have 
been  known  over  an  extent  of  fifty  miles 
around  by  a  singular  kind  of  wit  that 
mingled  with  his  half  wit.  There  seems, 
indeed,  to  have  been  a  division  of  parties 
about  him  in  Peebles,  in  Selkirk,  and  other 
regions,  as  to  whether  he  was  really  crack- 
brained,  or  was  only  assuming  that  manner 
in  order  to  conceal  a  deeper  purpose,  as 
Alcibiades  at  the  banquet  spoke  more  freely 
from  his  mask  of  intoxication.  His  power 
of  singing  was  good,  and  this,  with  his 
mimic  talent,  and  a  tenderness  for  his  half- 
witted condition,  procured  for  him  a  wel- 
come in  the  farmers'  cottages  in  the  whole 
region  around. — Moncure  D.  Conway: 
The  Scott  Centenary  at  Edinburgh  {Harper's 
Magazine). 

General,  Mrs.,  in  Dickens's  Little 
Dorrit  (1857),  a  widow  lady  of  forty- 
five  whom  Mr.  Dorrit,  after  his 
release  from  the  Marshalsea,  engages 
to  "  form  the  mind  "  and  manners  of 
his  daughters.  She  is  of  a  dignified 
and  imposing  appearance,  immovable, 
imperturbable  in  her  rigid  propriety. 
She  had  no  opinions.  "  Her  way  of 
forming  a  mind  was  to  prevent  it 
from  forming  opinions.  She  had  a 
little  circular  set  of  mental  grooves 
or  rails  on  which  she  started  little 
trains  of  other  people's  opinions 
which  never  overtook  one  another 
and  never  got  anywhere."  She 
teaches  Little  Dorrit  to  say  Papa  in- 
stead of  Father:  "  Father  is  rather 
vulgar,  my  dear.  The  word  Papa, 
besides,  gives  a  pretty  form  to  the 
lips.  Papa,  potatoes,  poultry,  prunes 
and  prism  are  all  very  good  words  for 
the  lips;  especially  prunes  and  prism. 
You  will  find  it  serviceable  in  the 
formation  of  a  demeanor  if  you  some- 
times say  to  yourselves  in  Company — 
on  entering  a  room,  for  instance — 
Papa,  potatoes,  poultry,  prunes  and 
prism,  prunes  and  prism." 

Genevieve,  titular  heroine  of  a 
ballad^by  Coleridge. 


I've  seen  your  breast  with  pity  heave. 
And  therefore  love  I  you,  sweet  Genevieve  I 

Genevieve  is  also  the  heroine  of  his 
poem,  Love: 

And  so  I  won  my  Genevieve, 
My  bright  and  beauteous  bride. 

Geraint,  in  the  Arthurian  cycle,  a 
Knight  of  the  Round  Table  and  hero 
of  Geraint,  the  Son  of  Erbin  in  the 
Welsh  Mahinogion,  a  story  which 
Tennyson  has  elaborated  in  Enid,  one 
of  his  Idylls  of  the  King. 

Tennyson's  Geraint  is  the  imper- 
sonation of  doubt  and  all  the  confu- 
sion and  misery  and  wild  uncertain 
ghosts  it  breeds.  He  is  the  first  to 
suspect  Guinevere,  and  in  his  jealous 
terror  he  carries  his  bride  Enid  away 
from  Arthur's  court.  Waking  one 
night  he  misunderstands  her  broken 
words  of  self-accusation  that  she  was 
no  true  wife,  meaning  that  she  had 
lured  him  away  from  his  duty  to  the 
King.  Then  the  two  go  forth,  at  the 
moody  man's  command,  on  aimless 
adventures  which  end  in  Geraint's 
falling,  desperately  wounded,  after 
he  has  put  to  flight  the  retainers  of 
Earl  Limours.  Enid's  wifely  devo- 
tion in  nursing  him  back  to  health 
renews  his  faith  in  her  and  he  implores 
forgiveness.  In  the  elder  legends  the 
motive  is  simpler.  Geraint  thinks  it 
is  his  uxorious  indolence  that  has 
forfeited  Enid's  regard,  and  he  starts 
out  to  show  her  that  his  arm  has  not 
yet  lost  its  cunning — to  win  back  her 
love  by  some  high  deed. 

Geraldine,  a  name  introduced  into 
English  literature  by  Henry  Howard, 
Earl  of  Surrey,  who  in  a  series  of  son- 
nets addressed  Lady  Elizabeth  Fitz- 
gerald, daughter  of  the  ninth  Earl  of 
Kildare,  as  the  Fair  Geraldine.  At 
the  time  the  series  was  begun  (153  7) 
she  was  only  nine  years  old.  Scott 
sings  in  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel: 

That  favoured  strain  was  Surrey's  raptured 

That  fair  and  lovely  form,  the  Lady  Geral- 
dine. 

The  poet  Nash  adopted  the  love- 
strains  of  Surrey  as  the  basis  of 
romantic  fictions,  in  which  the  noble 


Geraldine 


Gerund 


lover  is  represented  as  travelling  in 
Italy,  proclaiming  the  matchless 
charms  of  his  beloved,  and  defending 
her  beauty  in  tilt  and  tournament. 

Coleridge  gives  the  name  of  Geral- 
dine to  the  witch  in  Christabel,  and 
Mrs.  Browning  makes  use  of  it  in  her 
ballad.  Lady  Geraldine' s  Courtship 
(1844),  where  a  high-born  lady  stoops 
to  a  poet  of  low  degree  after  a  period 
of  pretended  disdain. 

Geraldine,  in  Coleridge's  unfinished 
poem,  Christabel,  a  fair  witch  who 
possesses  magic  influence  over  the 
titular  heroine. 

Geraldine,  so  far  as  she  goes,  is  perfect. 
She  is  sui  generis.  The  reader  feels  the  sanae 
terror  and  perplexity  that  Christabel  in  vain 
struggles  to  express,  and  the  same  spell  that 
fascinates  her  eyes.  Who  and  what  is 
Geraldine. — Whence  come,  whither  going, 
and  what  designing?  .  .  .  Was  she 
really  the  daughter  of  Roland  de  Vaux  and 
would  the  friends  have  met  again  and  em- 
braced? We  are  not  among  those  who  wish 
to  have  Christabel  finished.  The  theme  is 
too  fine  and  subtle  to  bear  much  extension. 
— J.  G.  Lockhart:  Quarterly  Review,ln, p. 29. 

Gerolstein,  Rudolph,  Grand  Duke 
of,  in  Eugene  Sue's  Mysteries  of  Paris, 
a  young  sovereign  prince,  gifted  with 
vast  wealth,  irresistible  fascinations 
and  prodigious  strength,  who  goes 
about  in  various  disguises;  as  he 
describes  it — "  playing  Providence," 
relieving  misery,  righting  wrongs  and 
punishing  crime.  His  judgments  and 
inflictions,  however,  are  sometimes 
hardly  more  scrupulous  than  the 
methods  of  the  criminals  whom  he 
detects  and  crushes.  He  puts  out  the 
eyes  of  one  hardened  murderer  by 
way  of  rendering  his  punishment 
appropriate  and  lingering.  He  lets 
'loose  one  woman  of  preternatural 
profligacy  and  fascinations  on  a 
notary  whose  crimes  he  wishes  to 
imveil,  imder  orders  to  drive  him  into 
frenzy  by  perpetually  provoking  de- 
sire and  never  gratifying  it. 

Geronte,  a  favorite  name  with 
Moli^re  and,  after  him,  in  French 
dramatic  Hterature  and  popular 
humor,  for  a  bourgeois  and  phiHstine 
paterfamilias.  The  Geronte  of  Le 
Medecin  Malgre  Lui  (1666)  wishes 
to  force  his  daughter  Lucinde  into  a 
distasteful  marriage  with  Horace.    In 


Les  Fourberies  de  Scapin  (1671) 
Geronte  is  the  father  of  L^andre 
and  Hyacinthe,  who  reluctantly  opens 
his  purse  in  response  to  Scapin's 
hoaxes. 

Gerontius,  in  The  Dream  of  Geron- 
tius,  a  poem  which  expresses  Cardinal 
Newman's  conception  of  the  last 
great  change  through  which  a  faithful 
Catholic  passes  when  he  leaves  this 
world  for  the  world  of  spirits.  Geron- 
tius becomes  aware  of  the  presence  of 
his  guardian  angel  in  the  hollow  of 
whose  hand  he  is  borne  to  judgment, 
and  also  of  evil  beings  who  are  hunger- 
ing after  him,  and  seeking  to  renew 
in  him  the  old  spirit  of  rebellion.  He 
hears  the  songs  of  the  angels  as  he 
speeds  through  their  hosts  and  the 
prayers  of  those  kneeling  around  his 
death-bed  which  are  borne  into  the 
very  presence  of  God,  and  finally  the 
eager  spirit  dashes  from  the  hold  of 
its  guardian  angel  and  precipitates 
itself  at  "  the  dear  feet  of  Emmanuel." 

Gertrude,  in  Shakespeare's  Hamlet, 
Queen  of  Denmark  and  mother  of 
the  prince.  In  Saxo-Grammaticus 
her  name  is  given  as  Geruth  or 
Gerutha. 

Gertrude  of  Wyoming,  heroine  of  a 
poem  of  that  name  (1809)  by  Thomas 
Campbell,  deahng  with^  the  Indian 
invasion  and  devastation  of  the 
Valley  of  the  Wyoming  in  Pennsyl- 
vania in  1778.  Roaming  among  the 
forests  or  reposing  in  sequestered  nooks 
with  a  volume  of  Shakespeare,  Ger- 
trude grows  up  to  lonely  womanhood. 
In  Albert  Waldegrave,  an  orphan 
whom  the  Indian  Outalissi  had  saved 
alive  from  slaughter  by  a  British  force 
and  whom  her  father  had  adopted, 
she  unexpectedly  discovers  the  lover 
she  had  dreamed  of;  they  are  married 
and  after  three  months  of  wedded 
bHss  are  both  killed  in  the  invasion 
of  Brant  and  his  warriors. 

Gerund,  or  Gerundio,  Friar,  hero 
of  a  famous  satirical  romance  by 
Padre  Isla,  known  in  the  original 
Spanish  as  Fray  Gerundio  de  Cam- 
pazas  (1758).  The  fun  is  directed 
against  the  itinerant  preachers  of  the 
peninsula  and  the  bad  taste,  false  wit, 
bombast  and  bathos  of  their  sermons. 


Giafar 


170 


Ginevra  dei  Benci 


Giafar,  or,  more  correctly,  Jaffar, 
the  Barmecide,  vizier  to  Haroun  Alra- 
shid,  both  in  historical  fact  and  in  the 
fiction  of  the  Arabian  Nights'  Enter- 
tainment. He  accompanied  that 
caliph  in  all  his  nightly  rambles  and 
hair-breadth  adventures  until  his  fall 
from  power  in  802.    See  Barmecide. 

Giaour,  The.  The  word  simply 
means  an  infidel.  In  Byron's  poem 
of  that  title,  the  Giaour  steals  from 
the  seraglio  of  the  Caliph  Hassan  the 
beautiful  slave  Leila.  The  caliph 
pursues  and  captures  Leila,  whom  he 
casts  into  the  sea  but  is  himself  slain. 
On  his  death-bed  the  Giaour  confesses 
and  requests  that  he  be  buried  with- 
out a  name. 

Gibbie,  Goose,  in  Scott's  Old  Mor- 
tality, the  half-witted  servant  of  Lady 
Bellenden. 

Gigadibs,  in  Robert  Browning's 
poem.  Bishop  BUmgram,  a  young  poet 
of  thirty,  immature,  desultory,  im- 
pulsive, who  criticises  Blougram_  and 
serves  to  draw  out  his  ideas  on  religion 
and  the  proper  conduct  of  a  successful 
life. 

Gilfil,  The  Rev.  Maynard,  titular 
hero  of  George  Eliot's  Mr.  Gilfil's 
Love-Story  in  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life 
(1858),  an  excellent  old  gentleman 
who  smoked  very  long  pipes  and 
preached  very  short  sermons.  For 
all  his  odd  ways  and  slipshod  talks  he 
never  lost  the  respect  of  his  parish- 
ioners nor  the  affection  of  their  chil- 
dren. The  story  concerns  an  episode 
of  his  youth  when  "  he  had  known  all 
the  deep  secrets  of  devoted  love,  had 
struggled  through  its  days  and  nights 
of  anguish  and  trembled  under  its 
unspeakable  joys." 

Gilmour,  Elizabeth,  nicknamed 
Elly,  heroine  of  a  novel  by  Anne 
Thackeray  Ritchie,  The  Story  of 
Elizabeth.  When  she  is  18  her  mother 
is  only  36  and  is  jealous  of  the  atten- 
tions that  Elly  receives.  Jealousy 
deepens  to  hatred  when  Sir  John 
Dampier,  whose  boyish  fancy  the 
mother  had  caught  in  her  girlhood, 
is  now  fascinated  by  Elly's  fresh 
beauty  and  winsome  ways.  Having 
madly  loved  him  for  twenty  years, 
Mrs.  Gilmour  conceived  that  she  had 


by  her  constancy  won  the  sole  right 
to  his  affections. 

Gilpin,  John,  hero  of  a  humorous 
ballad  by  William  Cowper,  The  Di- 
verting History  of  John  Gilpin,  show- 
ing how  he  went  further  than  he 
intended,  and  came  safe  home  again, 
printed  anonymously  in  1782.  A 
linen  draper  and  a  train-band  captain 
in  London,  his  wife  suggests  that  they 
shall  take  their  first  holiday  on  the 
twentieth  anniversary  of  their  mar- 
riage. The  family  proceeds  by  coach 
to  Edmonton.  Gilpin  arranged  to 
join  them  there  for  dinner,  but  he 
elects  to  go  on  horseback  and,  being 
a  poor  rider,  meets  with  ludicrous  and 
disconcerting  misadventures,  finds  it 
impossible  to  rein  up  at  Edmonton, 
and  finally  turns  his  horse  back  to 
London,  which  he  reaches  dinnerless 
and  bedraggled.  Lady  Austin  gave 
the  hint  to  the  poet  by  telling  him  a 
similar  story,  and  a  true  one,  con- 
cerning one  Beyer  of  Paternoster 
Row,  who  died  in  1791. 

Ginevra,  in  Ariosto's  Orlando  Furi- 
oso,  an  innocent  lady  who  during  the 
absence  of  her  true  love,  Ariodantes, 
is  falsely  accused  by  a  wicked  duke. 
Rinaldo  champions  her  cause,  slays 
the  duke  in  single  combat  and  restores 
the  lady  to  Ariodantes,  who  oppor- 
tunely reappears.  Spenser  utilizes 
the  story  in  his  Tale  of  Irena,  and 
Shakespeare  himself  borrows  a  hint 
from  it  in  the  underplot  of  Hero  and 
Don  John,  Much  Ado  about  Nothing. 

Ginevra  dei  Benci,  a  Florentine 
lady  whose  portrait  by  Ghirlandajo  is 
in  Santa  Maria  Novella,  is  the  heroine 
of  a  popular  tradition  versified  by 
Samuel  Rogers  in  Italy  (1822).  The 
evening  before  her  marriage,  playing 
hide  and  seek,  Ginevra  hid  in  a  trunk; 
the  heavy  lid  closed  upon  her,  the 
lock  snapped  fast.  Search  was  in 
vain.  Her  fair  fame  suffered  at  the 
hands  of  malicious  women  jealous  of 
her  beauty.  Years  later  the  chest 
was  opened.  Her  remains  were 
found,  with  the  peculiar  perfume  she 
used  still  lingering  in  her  hair,  one 
hand  grasping  the  jewel  her  bride- 
groom had  given  her  to  fasten  the 
front  of  her  gown.    A  similar  story 


Ginz^s  Baby 


171 


Gloriana 


is  told  in  the  anonymous  English 
ballad,  The  Mistletoe  Bough. 

Ginx's  Baby,  in  a  satirical  novel  of 
that  name  (1870)  by  Edward  Jenkins, 
the  thirteenth  child  in  a  destitute 
family.  His  father  proposed  to  drown 
him  for  a  nuisance  but  was  persuaded 
to  hand  him  over  to  a  Roman  Catholic 
Sister  of  Mercy.  The  Protestant 
Detectoral  Association  rescued  him 
from  "  Papistical  "  hands  to  find  that 
they  had  squandered  in  public  meet- 
ings, salaries  and  tracts  all  the  funds 
raised  for  his  support  by  benevolent 
zealots.  The  parish  squabbled  over 
him  with  another  parish  and,  after 
ruinous  litigation,  turned  him  back 
to  Ginx,  who  left  him  on  the  door- 
step of  a  club.  The  club  brought  him 
up  to  be  a  page,  but  discharged  him 
when  he  took  to  stealing  silver  spoons, 
whereupon  Ginx's  baby  leaped  from 
Vauxhall  Bridge  and  there  was  an  end 
of  him. 

Glaucus,  the  hero  of  Bulwer- 
Lytton's  historical  novel.  The  Last 
Days  of  Pompeii  (1834),  with  whom 
Nydia  is  in  love. 

Glenarvon,  hero  of  a  novel  ^  of 
that  name  (1816)  by  Lady  Caroline 
Lamb.  He  is  a  somewhat  malicious 
obvious  caricature  of  Lord  Byron, 
with  whom  the  lady  had  been  deeply 
infatuated. 

I  suppose  you  have  seen  Glenarvon? 
Madame  de  Stael  lent  it  to  me  to  read  from 
Coppet  last  summer.  It  seems  to  me  that 
if  the  authoress  had  written  the  truth  and 
nothing  but  the  truth — the  whole  truth — 
the  romance  would  not  only  have  been  more 
romantic,  but  more  entertaining.  As  to  the 
likeness,  the  picture  can't  be  good.  I  did 
not  sit  long  enough. — Byron:  Letter  to 
Moore,  December,  18 16. 

Glendenning,  Edward,  in  Scott's 
romance,  The  Monastery,  reappears 
in  its  sequel.  The  Abbot  as  Father 
Ambrose,  last  abbot  of  Saint  Mary's. 
In  the  "  days  of  tribtdation  *'  which 
"  wrenched  asunder  the  allegiance  of 
Christians  to  the  Church,"  he  was 
•'  turned  out  of  house  and  home- 
stead," and  deprived  of  "  the  tem- 
poralities of  that  noble  house  of  God." 
But  with  undiminished  zeal  he  de- 
voted himself  to  Queen  Mary's  re- 
lease, not  scorning  to  "  wear  the  garb 


of  a  base  sworder,  and  run  the  risk  of 
dying  the  death  of  a  traitor." 

Glendower,  Owen  (1359-1415),  a 
Welsh  rebel  lord  of  Glyndwr,  who 
proclaimed  himself  Prince  of  Wales 
in  1402  and  next  year  joined  the 
rising  under  Harry  Percy — the 
famous  *'  Hotspur."  They  were  de- 
feated at  Shrewsbury,  June  21,  1403. 
Shakespeare  introduces  him  into  / 
Henry  IV  (Act  iii,  Sc.  i)  as  a  vain- 
glorious boaster,  confident  that  he 
possesses  supernatural  powers  and 
can  summon  spirits  from  the  vasty 
deep.    Hotspur  laughs  at  him: 

Why  so  can  I  and  so  can  any  man 
But  will  they  come  when  you  do  summon 
them? 

Glenthom,  Lord,  hero  of  Miss 
Edgeworth's  novel.  Ennui  (1809). 
Brought  up  by  a  tricky  but  indulgent 
guardian  as  the  heir  to  a  immense 
estate  in  England  and  Ireland,  he  is 
blas4  from  his  teens.  He  tries  travel- 
ling, gambling,  feasting,  hunting, 
pugilism,  coach-driving,  love-making, 
all  in  vain.  He  even  thinks  seriously 
of  suicide.  The  lucky  discovery  that 
he  was  changed  at  birth  saves  him. 
He  magnanimously  surrenders  every- 
thing to  the  rightfiil  owner,  now  a 
blacksmith,  studies  law,  suceeds  at 
the  bar,  and  ends  by  marrying  the  ex- 
blacksmith's  heiress.  Lord  Jeffrey, 
in  a  review  of  Alfieri's  Life  (Essays, 
p.  145),  detects  a  marked  resemblance 
between  the  poet  and  the  imaginary 
peer,  and  opines  that  "  if  these 
Memoirs  had  been  published  when 
Miss  Edgeworth's  story  was  written, 
it  would  have  been  impossible  not  to 
suppose  that  she  had  derived  from 
them  everything  that  is  striking  and 
extravagant  in  her  own  narrative. 

Gloriana,  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene,  the  Queen  of  Fairyland;  a 
personification  both  of  Glory  and  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  as  Spenser  explains 
in  his  introductory  letter  to  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh:  "  In  that  Faerie 
Queene  I  mean  Glory  in  my  general 
intention,  but  in  my  particular  I 
conceive  the  most  excellent  and  glori- 
ous person  of  our  soveraine  the 
Queene."  She  is  thus  introduced  in 
Canto  I,  St.  iii: 


Glorvina 


172 


Gobseck 


Upon  a  great  adventure  he  was  bound, 
That  greatest  Gloriana  to  him  gave. 
That    greatest    glorious    Queene    of    Faery 
Land, 
To  winne  him  worship,  and  her  grace  to 
have. 

Glorvina,  Lady,  heroine  of  The 
Wild  Irish  Girl  (1801),  a  novel  by 
Sidney  Owenson,  afterwards  Lady 
Morgan.  Glorvina  is  the  daughter 
of  the  Prince  of  Inismore,  one  of  the 
ancient  Irish  nobility.  A  gentle- 
manly stranger,  hurt  by  a  fall,  is 
taken  into  her  home  and  the  young 
people  fall  in  love.  Glorvina  is  bound 
by  an  engagement  to  an  elderly 
English  nobleman,  though  boimd  only 
by  gratitude,  and  when  it  afterwards 
turns  out  that  the  young  man  is  the 
son  of  the  nobleman  to  whom  she  is 
affianced,  the  latter  gallantly  sur- 
renders her. 

Gloucester,  Earl  of,  father  of 
Edgar  and  Edmund,  in  the  epi- 
sode which  Shakespeare  has  taken 
from  Sidney's  story  of  the  blind 
King  of  Paphlagonia  in  The  Ar- 
cadia and  woven  into  the  texture  of 
King  Lear. 

Shakespeare  found  there  the  father,  lov- 
ing, kind-hearted,  but  suspicious,  and  weak 
in  principle  and  in  mind;  the  bastard,  an 
ungrateful  villain;  the  legitimate  son,  a 
model  of  filial  affection;  the  attempt  of  his 
suspicious  and  deceived  father  to  kill  him; 
and  even  the  loss  of  Gloucester's  eyes,  and 
his  contrivance  to  commit  suicide  by  get- 
ting his  son  to  lead  him  to  the  verge  of  a 
cliff,  whence  he  might  cast  himself  down: 
all  is  there, — the  incidents,  the  personages, 
and  their  characters. — Richard  Grant 
White. 

Gloucester,  Richard,  Duke  of.  See 
Plantagenet  and  Richard  III.  He 
is  first  called  Gloucester  in  III  Henry 
VI,  iii,  2. 

Glover,  Catharine,  heroine  of 
Scott's  novel.  The  Fair  Maid  of 
Perth,  "  universally  acknowledged  to 
be  the  most  beautiful  young  woman 
of  the  city  or  its  vicinity."  Daughter 
of  Simon,  the  old  glover,  she  eventu- 
ally becomes  the  bride  of  Henry  Gow, 
known  also  as  Henry  Smith,  the 
armorer.    See  Conachar. 

Glowry,  Mr.,  the  owner  of  Night- 
mare Abbey,  in  Peacock's  novel  of 
that  name. 


Glubdubrib,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's 
Travels  (1726),  one  of  the  imaginary 
islands  visited  by  GuUiver.  It  was 
peopled  by  sorcerers  who  stunmoned 
up  for  his  amusement  the  shades  of 
people  famous  in  the  past. 

Glumdalclitch,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's 
Travels  (1726),  a  Httle  girl  nine  years 
old  and  forty  feet  high,  who  had 
charge  of  GuUiver  while  he  dwelt  in 
Brobdingnag. 

Gobbo,  Launcelot,  in  Shakespeare's 
comedy,  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  a 
mixture  of  servant  and  buffoon  who 
leaves  Shylock's  service  for  that  of 
the  Christian  Bassanio.  The  scene 
with  his  father.  Old  Gobbo,  in  Act 
ii,  2,  is  a  favorite  bit  of  clownish 
humor  greatly  expanded  in  the 
usual  performance  by  traditional 
"  business  "  that  has  no  warrant  in 
the  text. 

Gobseck,  Esther  Van,  in  Balzac's 
Grandeurs  et  Mishes  des  Courtisanes 
and  in  other  novels,  the  great  grand- 
niece  of  Jean  Esther  Van  Gobseck. 
She  early  became  a  prostitute,  hke 
her  mother.  When  she  met  Lucien 
de  Rubempr6  each  fell  in  love  with 
the  other.  Lucien  foolishly  took  her 
to  the  opera,  where  she  was  unmasked 
and  insulted.  Later,  Jacques  Collin, 
the  powerful  and  dangerous  protector 
of  Lucien,  saw  and  fell  in  love  with 
her.  He  converted  her  to  Catholicism 
and  installed  her  in  a  suite  of  rooms. 
She  was  only  allowed  to  take  a  prome- 
nade at  night.  Baron  de  Nucingen 
unearthed  the  mysterious  beauty  and 
by  the  power  of  money  won  her  from 
Collin.  By  1830  she  owned  a  fine 
house  in  Rue  St.  George,  which 
eclipsed  that  of  any  other  courtesan. 
She  died  by  suicide,  all  unknowing 
that  she  was  heiress  to  seven  million 
francs  which  had  been  left  to  her  by 
her  grand  uncle. 

Gobseck,  Jean  Esther  Van,  a  miser 
and  usurer,  is  the  titular  hero  of 
Balzac's  Papa  Gobseck  and  flits 
through  the  pages  of  Father  Goriot, 
Ccesar  Birotteau,  etc.  The  son  of  a 
Jew  and  a  Dutch  woman,  bom  in 
Antwerp  in  1740,  he  travelled  all  over 
the  world  and  finally  settled  in  Paris. 
The  accumulation  of  gold  and  the 


Godfrey  of  Bullogne 


173 


Goody  Two-Shoes 


power  won  by  gold  were  his  only  joy. 
In  Paris  he  became  head  centre  of 
many  businesses,  establishing  himself 
on  the  Rue  des  Gres,  where,  arrayed 
in  his  dressing  gown,  he  lived 
most  sordidly  despite  his  enormous 
wealth. 

Godfrey  of  Bullogne,  the  cheif 
character  of  Tasso's  Jerusalem  De- 
livered (1575),  and  the  title  under 
which  Edward  Fairfax  published 
(1600)  his  translation,  in  the  Spen- 
serian stanza.  A  version  by  Richard 
Carew  had  already  appeared,' in  1594, 
in  the  same  measure,  under  the  title 
of  A  Boke  called  Godfrai  of  Bulloign, 
an  heroicalepoemof  S.  Torqtmto  Tasso, 
Englished  hy  R.  C.  Godfrey  of  Bou- 
logne (the  modernized  spelling)  ap- 
pears also  in  Walter  Scott's  romance, 
Count  Robert  of  Paris.  Godfrey, 
Duke  of  Lorraine,  was  proclaimed 
king  of  Jerusalem  when  the  Crusaders 
temporarily  conquered  the  Holy 
Land. 

Godiva,  or  Godgifu,  a  historical 
character  (about  1040- 1080),  wife  of 
Leofric,  first  Earl  of  Mercia.  Tenny- 
son makes  her  the  heroine  of  a  poem, 
Godiva,  a  Tale  of  Coventry  (1842), 
which  is  founded  on  a  legend  first 
printed  by  Roger  of  Wendover  in  his 
Flores  (1237)  and  later  (16 13)  versi- 
fied by  Drayton,  Polyoblion,  xiii.  In 
Tennyson's  version  Godiva  begs  her 
husband  to  remit  an  oppressive  tax 
under  which  Coventry  had  grown 
restive.  He  heedlessly  agreed  on 
what  he  thought  was  the  impossible 
condition  that  she  should  ride  naked 
through  the  town  at  midday.  She 
took  him  at  his  word  (first  giving 
notice  that  all  doors  and  windows  in 
the  town  should  be  closed  and  that 
no  one  should  stir  abroad  that  noon) 
and  Sir  Leofric  kept  his  word.  See 
Walsh:  Curiosities  of  Popular  Cus- 
toms, p.  471. 

Goldtip,  Spiflington,  familiarly 
known  as  "  Spifly,"  a  social  promoter 
in  Latu-ence  Oliphant's  satirical  novel, 
Picadilly  (1870),  who  launches  rich 
vulgarians  into  Mayfair. 

Golightly,  in  Kipling's  story  The 
Arrest  of  Lieutenant  Golightly  in  Plain 
Tales  from  the  Hills,  a  fastidious  and 


dandified  officer  whose  outfit  is  ruined 
by  a  tremendous  rainfall,  so  that, 
dirty  and  dishevelled,  he  is  arrested 
by  mistake  for  a  deserter. 

Goneril,  in  Shakespeare's  King 
Lear,  one  of  the  monarch's  ungrateful 
daughters  who,  after  he  has  been 
deposed,  plots  against  her  sister 
Regan,  poisons  her,  and  dies  (v,  3). 

The  monsters  Goneril  and  Regan  are 
gorgons  rather  than  women,  such  as  Shake- 
speare has  nowhere  else  conceived.  The 
aspect  of  Goneril  can  almost  turn  to  stone; 
in  Regan's  tongue  there  is  a  viperous  hiss. 
Goneril  is  the  more  formidable  because  the 
more  incapable  of  any  hatred  which  is  not 
solid  and  four-square.  Regan  acts  under 
her  sister's  influence,  but  has  an  eager 
venomousness  of  her  own. — Dowden. 

Goodenough,  Dr.,  in  Thackeray's 
Pendennis,  the  physician  who  attends 
Arthur  when  dangerously  ill  of  fever. 
He  is  mentioned  in  The  Newcomes 
(ix,  ixxx)  and  reappears  in  The  Adven- 
tures of  Philip  as  the  friend  and 
adviser  of  the  Little  Sister  and  of 
Philip,  though  he  disUkes  and  dis- 
trusts Phihp's  father.  Dr.  Firmin. 
The  writing  of  Pendennis  was  inter- 
rupted by  the  dangerous  illness  of  its 
author.  Dr.  John  Elliotson,  who 
attended  him,  refused  to  accept  any 
fee  from  a  Hterary  man,  as  Dr.  Good- 
enough  refused  if  from  PhiUp.  When 
Pendennis  was  finished  Thackeray 
dedicated  the  book  to  him. 

Goody  Two-Shoes,  in  a  nursery 
tale  of  that  name  (1765)  attributed 
to  Oliver  Goldsmith.  Little  Margery- 
has  been  used  to  only  one  shoe  and  is 
so  tickled  when  presented  with  a  pair 
that  she  shows  them  to  everyone 
exclaiming  "  Two  Shoes!  "  Hence 
her  nickname.  It  appeared  anony- 
mously from  the  press  of  Newberry. 
Goldsmith  did  much  hackwork  for 
this  publisher  and  the  internal  evi- 
dence of  style  points  to  him.  The book 
has  a  spontaneous  and  playful  humor 
not  often  found  in  the  work  of  pro- 
fessional hackwriters.  The  very  ad- 
vertisement and  title-page  are  charac- 
teristic: 

"'We  are  desired  to  give  notice  that 
there  is  in  the  press,  and  speedily  wiU  oe 


Gorboduc 


174 


Grfleme 


published,  either  by  subscription  or  other- 
wise, as  the  public  shall  please  to  determine, 
the  History  of  Little  Goody  Two  Shoes, 
otherwise  Mrs.  Margery  Two  Shoes;  with 
the  means  by  which  she  acquired  learning 
and  wisdom,  and,  in  consequence  thereof, 
her  estate;  set  forth  at  large  for  the  benefit 
of  those 

"Who  from  a  state  of  rags  and  care. 
And  having  shoes  but  half  a  pair. 
Their  fortune  and  their  fame  should  fix. 
And  gallop  in  a  coach  and  six. "  *  !', 

The  name,  at  least,  existed  before 
Goldsmith's  time.  Charles  Cotton  in 
his  burlesque.  Journey  to  Ireland 
(1670),  describes  a  dinner  with  the 
Mayor  of  Chester,  when  this  colloquy 
occurs: 

Mistress  mayoress  complained  that  the  din- 
ner was  cold, 

"And  all  along  of  your  fiddle  faddle,"  quoth 
she. 

"  Why  then.  Goody  Two-Shoes,  what  if  it 
be? 

Hold  you.  If  you  can,  your  tittle  tattle," 
quoth  he. 

Gorboduc,  hero  and  title  of  the 
first  English  tragedy  (1561)  by 
Thomas  Norton  and  Thomas  Sack- 
viUe,  Lord  Buckhurst.  Gorboduc 
was  a  semimythical  king  of  Britain 
whose  story,  as  told  by  the  ancient 
chroniclers,  is  here  closely  followed. 
Succeeding  to  the  crown  shortly  after 
Lear,  he  profited  so  little  by  that 
monarch's  sorry  example  that  during 
his  life  he  divided  his  realm  between 
two  sons,  Ferrex  and  Porrex.  The 
princes  soon  fell  into  dissension; 
Porrex  stabbed  Ferrex  and  was 
himself  slain  by  his  mother,  who 
preferred  her  first-born;  and  the 
people,  rising  in  rebellion,  dethroned 
Gorboduc  and  his  consort  and  put 
both  to  death. 

Gordon,  Lord  George  (i 750-1 793), 
the  instigator  of  the  famous  "  No 
Popery  "  riots  in  England  in  1779,  is 
a  prominent  character  in  Dickens's 
Barnaby  Rudge  (1841),  the  hero  of 
which  enlists  himself  among  the 
rioters. 

Goriot,  Father,  titular  hero  of  Bal- 
zac's novel,  Phre  Goriot  (1835),  the 
story  of  King  Lear  modernized  and 
reduced  from  semi-barbaric  royalty 
to  the  humdrum  bourgeoisie  of 
Paris.  Mesdames  de  Restaud  and  de 
Nucingen  are  the  representatives  of 


Regan  and  Gonerie,  but  the  parental 
victim,  who  is  a  retired  grocer,  is 
allowed  no  solace  in  the  shape  of  a 
Cordelia. 

Gosling,  Giles,  in  Walter  Scott's 
Kenilworthj  landlord  of  the  Black 
Bear  Inn,  near  Cimmor  Place,  where 
he  lives  with  his  daughter  Cicely. 

Gotthelf,  Jeremias,  hero  of  Albert 
Bitzius's  story.  The  Mirror  of  Peas- 
ants. He  is  a  poor  Swiss  villager 
whose  trust  in  Providence  is  finally 
rewarded.  Bitzius  subsequently  used 
his  hero's  name  as  his  own  pseudo- 
nym. 

Gradasso,  in  Bojardo's  Orlando 
Innamorato  and  Ariosto's  Orlando 
Furioso,  a  boastful,  arrogant  yet 
vaUant  king  of  Sericana  who  invades 
France  in  a  quest  for  the  sword  and 
horse  of  Rinaldo.  His  vassals  who 
accompany  him  are  all  crowned  kings 
but  they  dare  not  address  him  save 
on  their  knees. 

Gradgrind,  Thomas,  in  Dickens's 
Hard  Times  (1854),  a  retired  whole- 
sale hardware  merchant.  "  A  man 
of  realities;  a  man  of  facts  and  cal- 
culations; a  man  who  proceeds  upon 
the  principle  that  two  and  two  are 
four,  and  nothing  over,  and  who  is 
not  to  be  talked  into  allowing  for 
anything  over;  Thomas  Gradgrind, 
sir, — peremptorily  Thomas,  Thomas 
Gradgrind;  with  a  rule  and  a  pair  of 
scales,  and  the  multiplication-table 
always  in  his  pocket,  sir,  ready  to 
weigh  and  measure  any  parcel  of 
human  nature,  and  tell  you  exactly 
what  it  comes  to.  It  is  a  mere  ques- 
tion of  figures,  a  case  of  simple  arith- 
metic." So  the  author  describes  him 
and  later  makes  him  reveal  himself 
in  his  advice  to  the  teacher,  Mr. 
M '  Choakumchild : 

"Now,  what  I  want  Is  facts.  Teach 
these  boys  and  girls  nothing  but  facts.  Facts 
alone  are  wanted  in  life.  Plant  nothing  else, 
and  root  out  everything  else.  You  can  only 
form  the  minds  of  reasoning  animals  upon 
facts:  nothing  else  will  ever  be  of  any 
service  to  them.  This  is  the  principle  on 
which  I  bring  up  my  own  children,  and  this 
Is  the  principle  on  which  I  bring  up  thes« 
ohildrea.    Stick  to  facta,  sirl" 

Graeme,  Roland,  in  Scott's  histori- 
cal romance.    The  Abbot  (1820),   a 


Granada 


176 


Grandison 


foundling  brought  up  as  a  page  in  the 
household  of  Sir  Halbert  Glenden- 
ning,  Knight  of  Avenel.  He  is  trans- 
ferred to  the  service  of  Mary  Stuart, 
Queen  of  Scots,  then  imprisoned  in 
Lochleven  Castle,  and  takes  gallant 
part  in  the  loyalist  plot  that  frees  her 
from  captivity  (1568).  He  marries 
his  true  love,  Catharine  Seyton, 
daughter  of  Lord  Seyton  and  maid 
of  honor  to  the  queen,  when  it  is 
discovered  that  he  is  the  true  heir  to 
the  barony  of  Anmdel,  and  conse- 
quently her  equal. 

Granada,  Archbishop  of,  in  Le 
Sage's  Gil  Bias  (vii,  3),  the  prelate  to 
whom  the  hero  attaches  himself  as 
private  secretary.  The  archbishop 
begs  **  whenever  thou  shalt  perceive 
my  pen  smack  of  old  age,  and  my 
genius  flag,  do  not  hesitate  to  tell  me 
of  it,  for  I  mistrust  my  own  judgment, 
as  that  maybe  biased  by  self-love." 
After  an  attack  ^  of  apoplexy  Gil 
Bias  ventiu-es  to  hint  that  his  grace's 
last  discoiurse  "  had  not  altogether  all 
the  energy  of  his  former  ones."  The 
archbishop  demurs.  "  You  are  yet 
too  young  to  make  proper  distinc- 
tions," he  says;  "  know,  child,  that  I 
never  composed  a  better  sermon.  Go 
tell  my  treasurer  to  give  you  a  hun- 
dred ducats.  Adieu,  Master  Gil  Bias; 
I  wish  you  all  manner  of  prosperity 
with  a  little  more  taste." 

Grandcourt,  Harleigh,  in  George 
Eliot's  Daniel  Deronda  (1876),  suitor 
for  the  hand  of  Gwendolen  Harleth 
and  subsequently  her  husband. 

Grandcourt,  to  whom  Gwendolen  sacri- 
fices herself,  is  compared  to  a  crab  or  a  boa- 
constrictor  slowly  pinching  its  victim  to 
death:  to  appeal  to  him  for  mercy  would 
be  as  idle  as  to  appeal  to  "a  dangerous 
serpent  ornamentally  coiled  on  her  arm." 
He  is  a  Tito  in  a  further  stage  of  develop- 
ment— with  all  better  feelings  atrophied, 
and  enabled,  by  his  fortune,  to  gratify  his 
spite  without  exerting  himself  in  intrigues. 
Like  Tito,  he  suggests,  to  me  at  least,  rather 
the  cruel  woman  than  the  male  autocrat. 
Some  critic  remarked,  to  George  Eliot's 
annoyance,  that  the  scenes  between  him 
and  his  parasite  Lush  showed  the  "imperi- 
ous feminine,  not  the  masculine  character." 
She  confronted  herself  by  the  statement 
that  Bernal  Osborne — a  thorough  man  of 
the  world — had  commended  these  scenes 
as  specially  lifelike.  I  can,  indeed,  accept 
both  views,  for  the  distinction  is  rather  too 
delicate  for  definite  application.    One  feels. 


I  think,  that  Grandcourt  was  drawn  by  a 
woman;  but  a  sort  of  voluptuous  enjoyment 
of  malignant  tyranny  is  unfortunately  not 
confined  to  either  sex. — Leslie  Stephen: 
George  Eliot. 

Grandet,  Eugenie,  heroine  of  Bal- 
zac's novel  of  that  name,  was  the  only 
daughter  of  Felix  Grandet,  bom  1796 
at  Satmiar.  Strictly  raised  by  a  pious 
and  gentle  mother  and  a  miserly 
father,  her  life  knew  no  other  love 
than  a  platonic  one  for  her  cousin, 
Charles  Grandet.  He  forgets  her 
when  away  in  the  Indies,  returning 
with  a  large  fortune  and  a  titled  bride. 
Eugenie,  now  an  orphan  of  thirty-one, 
gives  her  hand  to  the  elderly  Cruchot 
de  Bonfours,  who  had  sought  it  for 
nine  years.  Widowed  at  36  and  still 
a  virgin  she  returns  to  the  sombre 
paternal  house  at  Samnar  to  devote 
the  rest  of  her  life  to  benevolence 
and  charity. 

Grandet,  Pere  Felix,  in  Balzac's 
Eugenie  Grandet,  the  father  of  the 
heroine,  a  portentous  figure  of  con- 
centrated avarice. 

Grandison,  Mrs.  Caroline,  in 
George  Meredith's  novel,  The  Ordeal 
of  Richard  Feverel  (1859),  a  character 
thus  described  by  the  author:  "  She 
was  a  colorless  lady  of  an  unequivocal 
character,  living  upon  drugs,  and 
governing  her  husband  and  the  world 
from  her  sofa.  Woolly  Negroes 
blessed  her  name,  and  whiskered  John 
Thomases  deplored  her  weight. ' '  She 
had  rapidly  produced  eight  daughters, 
and  felt  the  solemnity  of  woman's 
mission.  A  son  was  denied  her.  Her 
husband,  **  quite  unobjectionable 
gentleman,  lost  heart  after  the  arrival 
of  the  eighth,  and  surrendered  his 
mind  to  more  frivolous  pursuits. 
After  that  disappointing  eighth  she 
also  lost  heart  and  '  relapsed  upon 
religion  and  little  dogs.*  " 

Grandison,  Charlotte,  in  Richard- 
son's novel.  Sir  Charles  Grandison 
(1754),  a  sister  to  the  titular  hero, 
sprightly  and  vivacious  but  curiously 
deficient  in  good  manners.  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montague,  comment- 
ing on  Charlotte's  failure  to  distin- 
guish between  pert  folly  and  humor — 
between  ill  nature  and  spirit — says 
rotmdly  that  she  should  have  been 


Grandison 


176 


Graziella 


treated  like  a  hmnorsome  child  and 
well  whipped  (see  Dobson's  Samuel 
Richardson,  pp.  158-159).  It  has 
been  suggested  that  Richardson  bor- 
rowed certain  of  her  traits  from  his 
friend  and  constant  correspondent, 
Lady  Bradshaigh.  Certainly  some 
of  Charlotte's  most  individual  ex- 
pressions are  to  be  found  in  that  lady's 
letters,  who,  moreover,  confesses  to 
"  saucy  freedoms  and  impertinences  " 
with  which  she  "  is  too  naturally 
inclined  to  treat  her  best  friends." 

Grandison,  Sir  Charles,  hero  of  a 
novel  of  that  name  (1754)  by  Samuel 
Richardson,  representing  the  author's 
ideal  man.  Sir  Charles  conquered 
his  own  generation  but  to-day  the 
critic  is  inclined  to  dismiss  him  as  a 
self-conscious  prig —  "  the  exponent 
of  a  courtesy  which  has  more  of  buck- 
ram and  punctilio  than  of  genuine 
benevolence  and  propriety  "(Austin 
Dob  son)  .  Taine  flippantly  suggested 
that  he  should  be  canonized  and 
stuffed.  Austin  Dobson  holds  that 
there  can  be  nothing  in  Johnson's 
suggestion,  as  reported  in  Miss 
Seward's  Anecdotes  (ii,  223),  that 
Grandison  was  modelled  on  Mr. 
Robert  Nelson  of  the  Festivals  and 
Fasts,  who  died  in  1715. 

He  Is  an  ideal  but  so  very,  very  tame 
that  it  is  hard  to  justify  his  existence.  He 
is  too  perfect  to  be  of  the  slightest  moral 
use  to  anybody.  He  has  everything  he 
wants,  so  that  he  has  no  temptation  to  be 
wicked;  he  is  incapable  of  immorality,  so 
that  he  is  easily  quit  of  all  inducements  to 
be  vicious;  he  has  no  passions,  so  that  he  is 
superior  to  every  sort  of  spiritual  contest; 
he  is  monstrously  clever,  so  that  he  has 
made  up  his  mind  about  everything  know- 
able  and  unknowable;  he  is  excessively  vir- 
tuous, so  that  he  has  made  it  up  in  the  right 
direction.  He  is,  as  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  re- 
marks, a  tedious  commentary  on  the  truth 
of  Mrs.  Randon  Crawley's  acute  reflection 
upon  the  moral  effect  of  five  thousand  a  year. 
He  is  only  a  pattern  creature,  because  he  has 
neither  need  nor  opportunity,  neither  long- 
ing nor  capacity  to  be  anything  else. — W.  E. 
Henley:    Views  and  Reviews,  p.  219. 

Grantley,  Archdeacon,  in  Anthony 
TroUope's  Barchester  Towers  and 
other  novels. 

My  archdeacon,  who  has  been  said  to  be 
lifelike,  was  the  simple  result  of  my  moral 
consciousness.  It  was  such  as  that,  in  my 
opinion,  that  an  archdeacon  should  be — or, 
at  any  rate,  would  be  with  such  advantages 


as  an  archdeacon  might  have  possessed: — 
and  lo!  an  archdeacon  was  produced  who 
has  been  declared  by  competent  authorities 
to  be  an  archdeacon  to  the  very  ground. — 
Trollope:    Autobiography. 

Grantorto  (It.  Great  Wrong),  In 
Spenser's  Faerie  Queene,  Book  V,  a 
personification  of  rebeUion  in  general, 
but  more  specifically  of  the  Irish 
rebellion  of  1850.  A  huge  giant  who 
attempts  to  keep  Irena  (Ireland)  out 
of  her  inheritance  is  finally  beaten  in 
single  combat  and  decapitated  by  Sir 
Artegal. 

Gray,  Auld  Robin,  hero  of  Lady 
Anne  Barnard's  ballad,  Auld  Robin 
Gray  (1772),  and  of  two  sequels  writ- 
ten many  years  later. 

Gray,  Dorian,  hero  of  Oscar  Wilde's 
novel,  The  Portrait  of  Dorian  Gray 
(1891),  a  debauchee  who  carries  his 
love  of  pleasure  to  unmentionable 
extremes.  The  record  of  his  downfall 
is  kept  by  a  portrait  which  grows  old 
and  hideous  while  the  sensualist  him- 
self preserves  all  his  youthful  beauty 
until  a  sudden  collapse  makes  himself 
and  his  portrait  contemporaries. 

Gray,  Duncan,  in  Robert  Bums's 
ballad  of  that  name  (1792),  a  Scotch 
peasant  lad  who,  treated  coldly  by 
Maggie  when  he  wooes  her,  takes  her 
affected  disdain  too  seriously  so  that 
she  fell  sick  and  was  like  to  die  until 
his  eyes  are  opened  and  he  wooes  her 
back  to  life.  The  refrain  is  well 
known: 

Ha,  hal  the  wooing  o'tl 

Graziella,  in  Lamartine's  story  of 
that  name,  the  heroine  of  a  true 
episode  in  the  author's  youth  when 
he  was  rusticating  on  the  coast  of 
Italy.  Ingratiating  himself  with  a 
fisherman's  family,  he  was  taken  into 
their  home  and  unwittingly  fell  in 
love  with  the  daughter  of  the  house. 
Her  parents  would  betroth  her  to  a 
wealthy  cousin,  but  Graziella  runs 
away  in  the  night.  The  hero  finds 
her  under  remarkable  circumstances 
and  restores  her  to  her  family,  but 
she  tears  herself  away  and  shortly 
after  he  hears  of  her  death. 

Graziella  of  course  was  published  as  a 
romance,  but  Lamartine  never  imagined  or 
invented  romances.   He  lived  them  and  then 


Greaves 


177 


Grey 


wrote  them  out.  Graziella  was  the  girl's 
real  name.  Her  family  still  live  near  Naples. 
One  of  them — a  cur6 — was  recently  inter- 
viewed about  her  by  a  contributor  to  one 
of  the  Italian  magazines.  "Graziella?"  he 
said,  "Ah,  yes,  she  was  my  aunt.  Her 
mother  had  a  lodger — a  Frenchman — a  M, 
Lam — Lam — yes  I  think  it  was  as  you  say 
Lamartine."  And  Lamartine  himself  says 
expressly  in  his  Memoires  that  the  story, 
save  for  one  or  two  trivial  details,  was  true. 
He  had  gratified  his  vanity  by  describing 
Graziella  as  a  coral  polisher,  whereas  in 
point  of  vulgar  fact,  she  was  a  cigarette- 
maker. — Francis  Gribble:  The  Passions 
of  the  French  Romantics. 

Greaves,  Sir  Latincelot,  hero  of 
Smollett's  romance,  Tlie  Adventures 
of  Sir  Launcelot  Greaves  (1762),  writ- 
ten to  beguile  the  time  during  his 
imprisonment  for  debt.  The  story 
is  a  somewhat  absurd  travestie  of 
Don  Quixote.  In  lieu  of  the  Spanish 
Knight  we  have  a  young  English 
squire  of  naturally  noble  disposition, 
but  half  crazed  by  love,  riding  with 
his  groom  along  English  country 
roads,  in  quest  of  wrongs  to  be  re- 
dressed, and,  after  sundry  adventures, 
in  which  other  odd  characters  figure, 
restored  in  the  end  to  sound  sense 
and  his  Amelia.  In  the  course  of  the 
story,  however,  the  author  leads  the 
hero  through  a  series  of  situations, 
affording  matter  for  social  descrip- 
tion and  satire;  and  he  takes  care  to 
conduct  him  at  sufficient  leisure 
through  the  King's  Bench. 

Grecian  Daughter,  The.  See  Eu- 
phrasia. 

Green,  Verdant,  in  the  novel  of  that 
name  (i860)  by  Cuthbert  Bede  (Rev. 
Edward  Bradley),  an  unsophisticated 
undergraduate  at  Oxford,  nicknamed 
Gig-lamps  from  the  large  spectacles 
he  wore.  After  being  the  favorite 
victim  of  practical  jokes  in  his  first 
year,  he  in  turn  victimizes  the 
greener  youths  who  succeed  him  in 
the  lower  classes.  The  tautological 
name  (verdant  of  course  is  Anglicized 
Latin  for  green)  seems  to  have  been 
no  invention  of  the  author's.  In 
Notes  and  Queries  Series  II,  i,  87, 
John  Murray  writes:  In  reading  a 
letter  of  the  date  1744  I  came  across 
the  name  Verdant  Green  as  a  famil- 
iar allusion.  Can  anyone  help  me  to 
discover  who  or  what  this  prototype 


of  Cuthbert  Bede's  famous  character 
was? "  The  appeal  received  no 
response. 

Gregory,  Miss,  heroine  of  a  series 
of  stories  by  Perceval  Gibbon,  bound 
together  under  the  title,  The  Adven- 
tures of  Miss  Gregory  (19 12).  She  is 
an  Englishwoman  of  wealth,  birth 
and  breeding,  fifty  years  old,  when 
she  is  introduced  to  us  with  "  just 
the  least  touch  of  the  arrogance  of  the 
high  caste  "  but  "  composed,  shrewd 
and  friendly."  A  professional  spec- 
tator, she  seeks  adventures  all  alone 
in  the  heart  of  Africa,  in  Russia,  in 
Germany,  and  finally  in  her  native 
England. 

Gretchen,  a  German  diminutive  of 
Margaret  {q.v.). 

Grey,  Agnes,  heroine  and  title  of 
a  novel  (1847)  by  Anne  Bronte 
("  Acton  Bell ")  which  is  in  part 
autobiographical  and  gives  the  story 
of  a  governess  in  a  north  of  England 
family  who  goes  through  many  of 
the  himiiliations  that  Anne  herself 
had  experienced  in  a  like  situation. 

Grey,  Henry,  in  Mrs.  Humphrey 
Ward's  novel  of  Robert  Elsmere 
(1888),  is  to  a  certain  extent  drawn 
from  Thomas  Hill  Green,  the  his- 
torian and  the  most  persuasive  master 
of  philosophic  thought  in  modem 
Oxford.  Mrs.  Ward  acknowledges 
that  she  had  him  in  mind,  but  adds 
that  the  character  of  Grey  is  in  no 
sense  a  portrait. 

"Reality  suggested  many  points  In  the 
description,  but  I  was  writing  a  novel  and 
not  a  biographical  study." — McClure's 
Magazine. 

Grey,  Maggy,  heroine  of  Mrs. 
Alexander's  novel.  The  Wooing  OH 
(1873).  A  familiar  type  of  the  Vic- 
torian heroine  with  her  eyes  of 
changing  blue,  pensive  and  sensitive, 
her  shy  mouth,  indescribable  nose, 
frank,  open  forehead,  delicately 
formed  neck,  and  pretty  figure,  al- 
ways modest,  always  natural,  always 
charming.  Beloved  by  Lord  Torchester 
and  her  cousin  John  Grey  she  cares 
only  for  Geoffrey  Trafford  {q.v.),  who 
at  first  deems  himself  too  old  for  her. 

Grey,  Vivian,  hero  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  (1827)  by  Benjamin  Disraeli. 


Grieur 


178 


Grundy 


A  brilliant,  impudent,  audacious 
youth  bubbling  over  with  epigrams 
and  paradoxes,  often  truer  than  they 
sound,  he  is  the  son  of  a  noted  man 
of  letters.  While  still  in  his  teens  he 
meets  at  his  father's  table  a  dull  but 
distinguished  statesman,  the  Mar- 
quess of  Carabas  (q.v.),  and  inveigles 
him  into  a  cabal  against  his  own  party 
which  ends  disastrously  to  all  con- 
cerned. Vivien,  having  unintention- 
ally killed  an  opponent  in  a  duel,  goes 
abroad  and  the  rest  of  the  book  de- 
scribes his  adventures  in  Europe. 
Disraeli's  own  likeness  to  Vivien  has 
been  often  urged,  probably  with  as 
much  truth  and  in  the  same  sense  as 
Thackeray's  resemblance  to  Pen- 
dennis  and  Bulwer's  to  Pelham.  See 
Lorraine,  Mrs.  Felix. 

Grieux,  Chevalier  des.    See  Les- 

CAUT,   MaNON. 

Grieve,  David,  hero  of  a  novel,  The 
History  of  David  Grieve  (1892)  by 
Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward.  David  and 
his  sister  Lome  are  the  children  of  a 
Scotch  workingman  and  a  French 
grisette.  The  girl  inherits  all  her 
mother's  nature,  the  boy  just  enough 
to  play  havoc  with  his  dour  Scotch 
virtue  in  a  single  episode.  He  rescues 
himself  from  his  seducer;  marries  a 
girl  who  is  in  no  way  his  equal,  and 
remains  faithful  to  her  in  the  belief 
that  marriage  is  an  inviolable  insti- 
tution. 

I  have  come  to  think  the  most  disappoint- 
ing and  hopeless  marriage,  nobly  borne,  to 
be  better  worth  having  than  what  people 
call  ideal  passion — ^if  the  ideal  passion  must 
be  enjoyed  at  the  expense  of  one  of  those 
fundamental  rules  which  poor  human  nature 
has  worked  out,  with  such  infinite  diflBculty 
end  pain,  for  the  protection  and  help  of  its 
weakness. — Book  iv.  Chap.  7. 

Grif ,  hero  and  title  of  a  novel  by 
B.  L.  Farjeon.  He  is  a  sort  of  an 
Oliver  Twist  in  the  Australian  dig- 
gings at  the  time  of  the  Gold  Rush, 
a  street  arab  and  a  thief  by  force  of 
circtmistance,  but  capable  of  develop- 
ing all  the  virtues. 

Grimes,  Peter,  hero  of  the  twenty- 
second  tale  in  George  Crabbe's  The 
Borough  (1810),  a  drunken  and  thiev- 
ish prodigal  who  makes  away  with 


three  of  his  sons  by  neglect  or  abuse 
but  escapes  conviction  through  lack 
of  evidence  and  dies  raving  mad  in 
the  parish  poor  house. 

Grip,  in  Dickens's  novel,  Barnahy 
Rudge,  an  evil-looking  and  all-too- 
knowing  parrot  whom  Bamaby  car- 
ries in  a  basket  at  his  back.  The 
bird's  favorite  cries,  which  it  uses  at 
all  inappropriately  appropriate  emer- 
gencies, are  "  Halloa!  "  "I'm  a 
devil,"  "  Never  say  die!  "  "  Polly 
put  the  kettle  on."  During  the 
Gordon  riots  its  vocabulary  was  aug- 
mented by  the  war  cry  of  the  mob, 
"  No  Popery!  "  The  raven  in  the 
story  was,  the  author  tells  us,  a  com- 
pound of  two  great  originals,  of  which 
he  was,  at  different  times,  the  pos- 
sessor, and  one  of  which,  stuffed,  was 
sold,  after  Dickens's  death,  for  the 
sum  of  ;^I20.  See  the  preface  to  the 
"  Charles  Dickens  "  edition. 

Grippy,  Leddy,  in  Gait's  novel,  The 
Entail,  one  of  the  author's  most 
humorous  characters. 

Griskinissa,  in  W.  B.  Rhodes*  bur- 
lesque tragedy,  Bombastes  Furioso, 
the  affianced  wife  of  Bombastes  (q.v.), 
whom  the  ICing  of  Atopia  would  fain 
marry. 

Grogan,  Tom,  in  F.  Hopkinson 
Smith's  novel  of  that  title,  the  as- 
sumed name  of  the  heroine.  Her 
husband,  a  stevedore  in  New  York 
harbor,  dies;  she  conceals  the  fact  in 
order  to  carry  on  the  business  in  his 
name  and  is  thereafter  herself  known 
as  Tom.  She  combines  a  powerful 
physique  and  great  strength  of  will 
with  a  tender,  maternal  love  for  her 
daughter  Jenny  and  her  crippled  boy 
Patsy.  Her  success  excites  the  jeal- 
ousy of  rival  stevedores  and  of  the 
Knights  of  Labor  whose  union  she 
had  refused  to  join.  Though  they 
resort  to  blackmail,  arson  and  at- 
tempted murder,  she  proves  more 
than  a  match  for  them  m  the  end. 

Gnmdy,  Mrs.,  now  accepted  as  a 
personification  of  that  awesome  prig, 
the  British  Matron,  with  her  narrow, 
inflexible  rules  of  propriety,  originally 
appeared  as  a  minor  character  in 
J.  M.  Morton's  comedy,  Speed  the 
Plough   (1798).     Dame    Ashfield,   a 


Guenn 


179 


Gulliver 


farmer's  wife,  is  jealous  of  her  neigh- 
bor Grundy's  prosperity,  but  is  under 
the  social  sway  of  his  wife  so  that  she 
can  do  nothing  without  wondering 
"  what  will  Mrs.  Grundy  say  ?  "  The 
play  opens  with  a  scene  of  a  farm- 
house, where  Farmer  Ashfield  is  dis- 
covered at  a  table  enjoying  his  pipe 
and  ale: — 

Ashfield.  Well,  dame,  welcome  whoam. 
What  news  does  thee  bring  vrom  market? 

Dame.  What  news,  husband?  What  I 
always  told  you — that  Farmer  Grundy's 
wheat  brought  five  shillings  a-quarter  more 
than  ours  did. 

Ashfield.  All  the  better  vor  he. 

Dame.  And  I  assure  you.  Dame  Grundy's 
butter  was  quite  the  crack  of  the  market. 

Ashfield.  Be  quiet,  woolye?  Always  ding, 
dinging  Dame  Grundy  into  my  ears.  What 
will  Mrs.  Grundy  zayf  Why  don't  thee 
letten  Mrs.  Grundy  alone?  I  do  verily 
think  that  when  thee  goest  to  t'other  world, 
the  vurst  question  thee'U  ax  '11  be,  if  Mrs. 
Grundy's  there? 

Guenn,  heroine  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  by  Blanche  Howard  Teufel 
(1883),  a  fisher  girl  of  Brittany,  wild, 
shy,  passionate  and  proud.  Her 
exuberant  feeHngs  are  wasted  in  a 
generous  love  for  the  artist  Hamor, 
who  secures  her  for  a  model.  His 
picture  done,  he  departs  as  lightly 
as  he  came,  leaving  the  poor  child 
broken-hearted  but  not  dishonored. 

Guest,  Stephen,  in  George  Ehot's 
novel.  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  (i860),  a 
typical  provincial  coxcomb  "  whose 
diamond  ring,  attar  of  roses  and  air 
of  nonchalant  leisure  at  twelve  o'clock 
in  the  day  are  the  graceful  and  odo- 
riferous result  of  the  largest  oilmill 
and  the  most  extensive  wharf  in  St. 
Ogg's. "  But  he  is  emotional  and  fond 
of  music  and  represents  to  Maggie 
Tulliver  the  aesthetic  element  she 
longs  for.  Though  Stephen  is  engaged 
to  her  cousin,  Lucy  Deane,  though 
Maggie  herself  is  half  pledged  to 
Philip  Wakem,  he  makes  passionate 
love  to  her  and  she,  after  passing 
through  a  "fierce  battle  of  emotions," 
presently  finds  herself  drifting  to  sea 
with  him  in  a  boat,  and  is  only 
arrested  by  her  conscience  at  the  last 
moment  when  she  is  some  way  to- 
ward Gretna  Green.  Maggie's  pas- 
sion for  Guest  has  ever  been  a  puzzle 


to  male  critics.    Swinburne  calls  him 
a  "  counter- jimiping  Adonis." 

George  Eliot  did  not  herself  understand 
what  a  mere  hair-dresser's  block  she  was 
describing  in  Mr.  Stephen  Guest.  He  is 
another  instance  of  her  incapacity  for  por- 
traying the  opposite  sex.  No  man  could 
have  introduced  such  a  character  without 
perceiving  what  an  impression  must  be 
made  upon  his  readers.  We  cannot  help 
regretting  Maggie's  fate;  she  is  touching 
and  attractive  to  the  last;  but  I,  at  least, 
cannot  help  wishing  that  the  third  volume 
could  have  been  suppressed. — Leslib 
Stephen:    George  Eliot. 

Guiderius  and  Arvigarus,  in  Shake- 
speare's Cymbeline,  sons  of  that  mon- 
arch, who  pass  under  the  names  of 
Polidore  and  Cadwal  as  supposed  sons 
to  Morgan,  who  had  kidnapped  them 
in  infancy  in  revenge  for  his  banish- 
ment. 

Guilderstem,  in  Shakespeare's 
Hamlet,    a    courtier.      See    Rosen- 

CRANTZ. 

Guinevere,  in  Tennyson's  Idylls  of 
the  King,  the  consort  of  Arthur,  to 
whom  she  proves  unfaithful  with  Sir 
Lancelot.  In  the  idyll  which  bears 
her  name  her  guilt  has  been  made 
public;  Lancelot  in  his  own  realm 
beyond  seas  has  been  defending  him- 
self against  Arthur;  and  the  queen, 
concealed  in  a  nunnery,  is  oscillating 
between  remorse  and  regret,  when 
the  king  himself  makes  his  appear- 
ance. He  has  stopped  on  his  way  to 
the  fatal  battle  where  a  whole  genera- 
tion of  heroes  were  finally  to  dis- 
appear. It  only  remained  to  show 
her  what  ruin  she  had  wrought,  to 
forgive  her,  and  to  part  forever. 

Gulbeyaz,  in  Byron's  Don  Juan, 
vi  (1824),  the  sultana  who  ransoms 
Juan  and  smuggles  him  into  the 
harem  in  female  disguise.  Finding 
that  he  and  Dudu  have  reached  an 
understanding  that  is  agreeable  to 
both,  she  commands  that  they  be 
stitched  up  in  a  bag  and  thrown  into 
the  Bosphorus.  Juan  escapes  to  sur- 
vive many  other  adventures. 

Gulliver,  Lemuel,  hero  and  pre- 
tended author  of  a  satirical  romance 
(1726),  by  Jonathan  Swift,  Travels  in 
Several  Remote  Nations  of  the  Earth 
by    Lemuel    Gulliver.      Originally    a 


Gulnare 


180 


Gwilt 


surgeon  in  London,  he  becomes  the 
captain  successively  of  several  ships. 
Four  of  his  voyages  are  made  to 
cotmtries  so  remarkable  that  he 
deems  it  right  to  publish  his  experi- 
ences. 

I.  He  is  wrecked  off  the  coast  of 
Lilliput  (q.v.),  a  country  inhabited 
by  a  race  of  pigmies  only  6  inches 
high  who  name  him  Quinbus  Flestrin 
or  "  Man  Mountain." 

II.  A  roc  carries  him  to  Brobding- 
nag  (q.v.).  Here  the  telescope  is 
reversed.  In  Lilliput  one  of  our 
inches  represents  a  foot;  in  Brobding- 
nag  one  of  our  feet  represents  an  inch. 

III.  He  is  driven  to  Laputa  (q.v.), 
the  country  of  quacks,  pretenders, 
empirics  and  impostors. 

IV.  He  visits  the  land  of  the 
Houyhnhimis  (q.v.),  a  race  of  horses, 
blessed  with  more  than  human  reason 
and  cursed  with  no  human  foUies  or 
vices. 

Gulnare,  in  Byron's  Corsair  (1814), 
the  wife  of  the  Sultan  Seyd.  She 
assists  Conrad  (q.v.)  to  escape  from 
prison  and  follows  him  disguised  as  a 
page.  She  reappears  in  the  same 
author's  Lara  as  Kaled,  Lara's  page, 
who  turns  out  to  be  a  woman. 

Gunga  Din,  in  Rudyard  Kipling's 
poem  of  that  name  (Barrack  Room 
Ballads)  is  the  regimental  water 
carrier,  a  Hindoo  lad  whose  single- 
minded  devotion  to  duty  leads  to  a 
heroic  death  on  the  battlefield.  We 
are  told  that 

'E  didn't  seem  to  know  the  use  o'  fear. 

Nevertheless  he  was  not  heroic  to 
the  view: 

The  uniform  *e  wore 
Was  nothin'  much  before 
An'  rather  less  than  'arf  o'  that  be'ind. 

Gurth,  in  Scott's  IvanJioe,  the 
**  bom  thrall,"  or  serf,  of  Cedric  of 
Rotherwood.  A  faithfiil  and  cautious 
drudge,  he  nevertheless  forsook  his 
herd  of  swine  to  attend  his  master's 
disinherited  son  at  Ashly-de-la-Zouch. 
Later,  with  Wamba,  he  took  a  leading 
part  in  the  attack  on  Front  de  Boeuf 's 
castle. 

Gurton,  Gammer  (i.e.,  Grand- 
mother), the  leading  character  in  the 


earliest  of  Enghsh  comedies,  Gammer 
Gurton's  Needle,  doubtfully  attri- 
buted to  John  Still,  afterwards  Bishop 
of  Bath  and  Wells.  It  was  first 
printed  in  1579.  Gammer  Gurton,  a 
diligent,  notable  old  dame,  possesses 
the  only  needle  in  the  parish  and  loses 
it  in  mending  her  man  Hodges's 
breeches.  Dicken  the  Bedlam,  a 
mischief-making  wag,  accuses  Dame 
Chat  of  steaUng  it  and  the  resultant 
squabbles  embroil  the  whole  neigh- 
borhood. 

In  1 8 10  John  Ritson  edited  a  collec- 
tion of  old  English  nursery  rhymes 
which  he  entitled  Gammer  Gurton' s 
Garland,  or  the  Nursery  Parnassus. 
Gammer  Gurton,  whose  name  is  here 
used  as  a  typical  English  grand- 
mother, was  evidently  put  out  as  a 
rival  of  Mother  Goose,  whose  Melo- 
dies had  been  collected  probably 
under  Oliver  Goldsmith's  supervision 
and  published  not  later  than  1760. 
It  contains  much  of  the  same  material 
with  additions.  Mother  Gurton 's 
reign  was  shortlived  and  she  at  no 
time  succeeded  in  ousting  Mother 
Goose  from  her  preeminence. 

Guyon,  Sir,  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene,  Book  ii  (this  book  celebrates 
the  triumph  of  temperance  over  in- 
temperance), the  personification  of 
temperance  in  its  largest  sense,  mean- 
ing control  alike  over  the  sensual 
appetites  and  the  meaner  mental  im- 
pulses. It  is  his  task  successively  to 
meet  and  subdue  Amavia,  or  intem- 
perance of  grief;  Braggadochio,  in- 
temperance of  the  tongue;  Furor, 
intemperance  of  anger,  Pyrocles  and 
Cymocles,  dual  representatives  of 
sexual  excess;  Phaedria,  intemperance 
of  pleasure,  and  Mammon,  or  the 
inordinate  love  of  gold.  But  the 
prime  object  of  his  quest  and  the 
final  crown  of  his  achievements  is  the 
destruction  of  Acrasia  (q.v.)  and  her 
Bower  of  Bliss. 

Gwilt,  Lydia,  in  Wilkle  ColHns's 
novel,  Armadale  (1866),  a  precocious 
criminal,  who  at  twelve  years  of  age 
forges  a  letter  to  deceive  a  father  into 
allowing  his  daughter  to  throw  herself 
away.  Though  hateful  and  hideous, 
Lydia  draws  a  certain  pity  by  reason 


Gwynplaine 


181 


Haji  Baba 


of  her  lonely  childhood  and  her 
strength  of  character.  In  the  end  she 
gives  her  life  to  save  her  lover  from 
the  fatal  consequences  of  her  own 
crime. 

Gwynplaine,  hero  of  Victor  Hugo's 
historical  romance,  The  Man  Who 
Laughs  {Fr.jL  Homme  qui  Rit,  1869). 
To  deprive  him  of  a  heritage  he  had 
in  childhood  been  disfigured  out  of 
recognition.  An  artist  in  what  was 
known  to  the  England  of  James  II  as 
comprachico,  had  cut  both  sides  of 
his  mouth  upward  to  the  ears,  leaving 
on  the  face  for  life  a  hideous  and 
ineffaceable  grin.  The  wretched  vic- 
tim had  the  air  of  perpetually  laugh- 
ing. Yet  it  was  by  virtue  of  this  very 
deformity  that  Gwynplaine  caught 
the  fancy  of  the  Duchess  Josiana  who 
yearned  either  for  a  god  or  for  a 
monster.  He  is  saved  from  her  wiles 
by  his  love  for  the  blind  girl  Dea. 
Sightless,  she  sees  with  the  keener, 
truer  vision  of  the  soul.  Snatched 
when  an  infant,  by  the  hand  of  the 
boy,  from  the  breast  of  her  dead 
mother  in  the  fatal  snowdrift,  Dea 
has  grown  to  feel  a  woman's  love 
blend  with  her  sense  of  grateful  trust 
in  the  man's  strong  arm  and  ardent 
will.  The  outcast  and  butt  of  the 
mob  is  to  her  the  ideal  of  manly  form. 
His  voice,  his  step,  his  presence,  are 
those  of  a  god.    To  him  she  is  the 


guardian  angel  who  keeps  his  animal 
nature  in  subjection.  The  thought 
of  her  breaks  the  spell  which  Josiana 
had  cast  over  him.  But  Dea  dies  and 
Gwynplaine  commits  suicide. 

Gynt,  Peer.  A  kind  of  Norse 
Faust,  celebrated  in  the  folk  legends 
of  Norway,  whose  superabundant 
imagination  threatens  him  with  de- 
struction unless  he  is  saved  by  a 
woman.  Ibsen  took  him  as  the 
titular  hero  of  a  dramatic  poem 
(1867)  usually  reckoned  his  master- 
piece. Gynt  is  here  introduced  as  a 
peasant  lad  living  in  poverty  with 
his  widowed  mother  Ase.  Full  of 
great  ideas  and  glorious  plans  for  the 
future,  his  youthful  arrogance  knows 
no  bounds.  He  attends  a  wedding 
and  carries  off  Solvejg,  the  bride,  to  a 
mountain,  where  he  soon  deserts  her. 
After  many  adventures  he  finds  him- 
self in  the  hall^  of  the  King  of  the 
Dovre  Mountains,  whose  daughter 
he  wooes.  Banished  by  the  king,  he 
returns  home  to  find  Ase  dying. 
After  her  death  he  sails  for  foreign 
climes,  eventually  landing,  rich  and 
powerful,  on  the  coast  of  Morocco 
where  he  realizes  some  of  his  early 
dreams  but  without  any  of  the  ex- 
pected happiness.  Finally,  old,  gray 
and  disenchanted,  he  returns  to  the 
faithful  Solvejg,  who  receives  him 
with  open  arms. 


H 


Hafed,  leader  of  the  Ghebers  in 
The  Fire-Worshippers,  the  third  tale 
in  Moore's  Lalla  Rookh  (181 7).  He 
falls  in  love  with  Hinda,  daughter  of 
Al  Hassan,  an  Arabian  emir  come  to 
extirpate  the  remnants  of  his  tribe 
in  their  rocky  fastnesses.  After  a 
desperate  defence  in  which  all  his 
tribe  are  slain,  Hafed  immolates  him- 
self upon  a  funeral  pyre.  Hinda,  a 
witness  to  his  fate  from  a  nearby 
galley,  leaps  into  the  water  and  is 
drowned. 

Haidee,  in  Bjrron's  Don  Juan, 
Cantos  ii,  iii  and  iv,  "  the  beauty  of 
the  Cyclades,"  motherless  daughter 
of  a  Greek  pirate  named  Lambro. 


Don  Juan,  shipwrecked  on  her  island, 
was  nursed  by  her  in  a  cave  and  they 
fell  mutually  in  love.  On  a  report 
that  Lambro  was  dead  Juan  issued 
from  his  concealment  and  gave  a 
grand  banquet  which  was  interrupted 
by  the  reappearance  of  the  pirate. 
Don  Juan  was  seized  and  sold  as  a 
slave,  Haidee  broke  a  blood-vessel 
and  died. 

Haji  Baba,  hero  of  an  oriental 
romance  by  James  Morier,  The  Ad- 
ventures of  Haji  Baba  of  Ispahan 
(1824),  a  sort  of  Persian  Gil  Bias,  a 
volatile,  unprincipled  adventurer 
who,  beginning  life  in  his  father's 
barber   shop   at   Ispahan,    becomes 


Hal 


182 


Halifax 


successively  one  of  a  band  of  Tar- 
comans,  a  menial  servant,  a  pupil  of 
the  physician-royal  of  Persia,  an 
attendant  on  the  chief  executioner,  a 
religious  devotee,  and  a  dealer  in 
tobacco  pipes  in  Constantinople. 
Stratagem  enables  him  to  win  the 
hand  of  a  rich  Turkish  widow;  he 
rises  to  be  an  official  to  the  Shah,  is 
appointed  Secretary  to  the  mission 
of  Mirzah  Firouz,  and  accompanies 
the  Russian  ambassador  to  London. 
A  sequel,  Haji  Baba  in  England 
(1828),  was  less  successful. 

The  Persian  Picaroon,  with  his  morals 
sitting  easy  about  him,  a  rogue  indeed,  but 
not  a  malicious  one,  with  as  much  wit  and 
cunning  as  enable  him  to  dupe  others,  and 
as  much  vanity  as  to  afford  them  perpetual 
means  of  retaliation;  a  sparrow-hawk,  who, 
while  he  floats  through  the  air  in  quest  of 
the  smaller  game,  is  himself  perpetually 
exposed  to  be  pounced  upon  by  some 
stronger  bird  of  prey,  interests  and  amuses 
us,  while  neither  deserving  nor  expecting 
serious  regard  or  esteem;  and  like  Will 
Vizard  of  the  hill,  "the  knave  is  our  very 
good  friend." — Sir  W.  Scott. 

Hal,  Bluff  King,  a  popular  nick- 
name for  King  Henry  VIII  of  Eng- 
land, which  has  given  a  title  to  a 
dozen  pantomimes  in  which  he  is  the 
hero.  Alternate  nicknames  are  Bluff 
Harry  and  Burly  King  Harry. 

Ere  yet  in  scorn  of  Peter's  pence, 
And  numbered  bead  and  shift, 

Bluff  Harry  broke  into  the  spence 
And  turned  the  cowls  adrift. 

— Tennyson. 

Hal,  Prince,  the  familiar  abbrevia- 
tion for  Henry,  Prince  of  Wales,  son 
of  Henry  IV,  who  succeeded  him  as 
Henry  V.  He  appears  in  Shake- 
speare's /  and  II  Henry  IV.  See  also 
Henry  V. 

The  Prince  whom  Shakespeare  admires 
and  loves  more  than  any  other  person  in 
English  history,  afterwards  to  become 
Shakespeare's  ideal  King  of  England,  cares 
little  for  mere  reputation.  He  does  not 
think  much  of  himself  and  of  his  own  honor; 
and  while  there  is  nothing  to  do  and  his 
great  father  holds  all  power  in  his  own  right 
hand.  Prince  Hal  escapes  from  the  cold 
proprieties  of  the  court  to  the  boisterous 
life  and  mirth  of  the  tavern.  He  is,  however, 
only  waiting  for  a  call  to  action,  and  Shake- 
speare declares  that  from  the  first  he  was 
conscious  of  bis  great  destiny,  and,  while 
seeming  to  scatter  his  force  in  frivolity, 
was  holding  his  true  self,  well  guarded,  in 


reserve.  May  there  not  have  been  a  young 
fellow  remembered  by  Shakespeare,  who 
went  by  night  on  deer-stealing  frolics  near 
Stratford,  who  yet  kept  from  waste  and  ruin 
a  true  self,  with  which  his  comrades  had 
small  acquaintance  and  who  now  helped 
Shakespeare  to  understand  the  nature  of  tha 
wild  Prince  and  his  scapegrace  acquaint- 
ances?— E.  Dowden:  Shakespeare  Primer. 

Hales,  the  Ever  Memorable  John, 

a  title  applied  to  John  Hales  (1584- 
1656),  a  famous  English  divine. 

Halevy,  Jehuda  ben,  a  Jewish  poet 
of  the  fifteenth  century  whom  Heine 
has  taken  as  the  titular  hero  of  one 
of  his  most  beautiful  poems.  Like 
the  Crusaders  he  made  his  pilgrimage 
to  Jerusalem;  and  there,  amid  the 
ruins,  sang  a  song  of  Zion  which  has 
become  famous  among  his  people.  A 
"  bold  Saracen,"  riding  by,  lolled 
over  his  saddle  and  plunged  a  spear 
into  the  singer's  breast:  "  Quietly 
flowed  the  Rabbi's  life-blood,  quietly 
he  sang  his  song  to  an  end  and  his 
last  dying  sigh  was  Jerusalem!  " 

Halifaz,  John,  hero  of  a  novel,  John 
Halifax,  Gentleman  (1856),  by  Mrs. 
Dinah  Mulock  Craik.  An  orphan 
brought  up  in  poverty  and  obscurity, 
he  finds  among  his  dead  father's 
effects  a  book  autographed  "  John 
Halifax,  Gentleman,"  and  he  takes 
this  designation  as  an  ideal  to  be 
lived  up  to.  By  faithfulness,  integ- 
rity and  grit  he  rises  to  wealth  and 
marries  a  girl  of  gentle  birth.  The 
character  is  said  to  have  been  studied 
from  Handel  Cossham,  the  son  of  a 
Gloucestershire  carpenter  who  be- 
came a  wealthy  colliery  owner.  Some 
of  the  British  critics  were  disposed 
to  question  whether  it  were  possible 
for  a  man  of  such  antecedents  to 
justify  the  term  "  gentleman "  so 
insistently  thrust  upon  him  on  the 
title-page.  The  question  could  never 
have  arisen  in  America. 

A  boy  who  begins  by  being'a  farm-servant 
until  he  is  fourteen,  and  then  is  employed 
in  a  tan-yard  to  fetch  the  skins  from  market, 
might  possess  all  the  fine  characteristics 
bestowed  on  John  Halifax, — his  self-reliance, 
his  energy,  his  integrity,  his  passion  for  self- 
improvement;  but  he  would  not — he  could 
not  attain  the  bearing  and  manners  of  a 
gentleman;  he  could  not  by  mere  effort  of 
self-culture  attain  the  tone  of  good  society. 
— Saturday  Review. 


Eallam 


183 


Hamlet 


Hallam,  Arthur,  the  intimate  friend 
of  Arthur  Tennyson  (engaged  to 
Tennyson's  sister) ,  whose  early  death 
occasioned  the  series  of  poems  bound 
together  as  In  Memoriam  (1850). 
Arthur  Hallam  (1811-1833)  was  the 
son  of  Henry  Hallam,  the  literary 
historian  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

I  know  not  how  to  express  what  I  have 
felt  ...  I  do  not  speak  as  another 
would  to  praise  ar.d  admire  the  poems;  few 
of  them  indeed  I  have  as  yet  been  capable 
of  reading,  the  grief  they  express  is  too  much 
akin  to  that  they  revive.  It  is  better  than 
any  monument  which  could  be  raised  to  the 
memory  of  my  beloved  son;  it  is  a  more 
lively  and  enduring  testament  to  his  great 
virtues  and  talents  that  the  world  should 
know  the  friendship  which  existed  between 
you,  that  posterity  should  associate  his 
name  vith  that  of  Alfred  Tennyson. — 
Henry  Hallam,  letter  to  Tennyson  in  A 
Mtmoir  of  Tennyson,  vol.  i,  p.  327. 

Haller,  Mrs.,  in  Benjamin  Thomp- 
son's drama  The  Stranger  (1797), 
adapted  from  Kolzebue,  is  the  name 
assumed  by  Adelaide,  Countess  of 
Waldbourg,  when  she  eloped  from 
her  husband.  The  latter  also  dropped 
his  identity,  and,  known  only  as  "  the 
stranger,"  led  a  roving  and  purpose- 
less life.  Mrs.  Haller  lives  for  three 
years  in  the  service  of  the  Countess 
of  Wintersen  and  is  there  sought  in 
marriage  by  Baron  Steinfort.  She 
confesses  the  truth  to  him,  and  he 
succeeds  in  finding  and  reconciling 
her  husband. 

Hamlet,  hero  of  Shakespeare's 
tragedy,  Hamlet,  Prince  of  Denmark. 
This  is  the  title  as  it  appears  in  the 
Folio  of  1623,  the  text  of  which  differs 
from  the  five  preceding  quartos  (1603, 
1604,  1605,  161 1,  the  last  undated) 
as  they  differ  more  or  less  materially 
from  one  another. 

Hamlet  in  his  final  evolution  is  the 
most  interesting  character  in  all 
imaginative  literature.  A  prince  of 
a  studious  and  philosophic  tempera- 
ment, his  natural  melancholy  is  aggra- 
vated by  the  mysterious  death  of  his 
father  and  the  hurried  wedding  that 
followed  between  his  widowed  mother 
and  his  uncle  Claudius,  who  had 
ustirped  the  throne.  The  Ghost  of 
his  father  appears;  reveals  that 
Claudius  had  murdered  him,  and 
swearshim  to  revenge.     Thereafter 


Hamlet's  mind  is  torn  by  doubt  and 
indecision.  He  assumes  an  "  antic 
disposition "  partly  to  baffle  his 
enemies,  partly  to  create  a  veil  behind 
which  to  hide  his  true  self,  partly 
because  his  whole  moral  nature  is 
indeed  deeply  disordered  (Dowden) 
— his  wild  and  excitable  state  lending 
itself  with  dangerous  ease  to  the 
feigning  of  actual  derangement.  He 
puts  the  Ghost's  credibility  to  the 
test  by  hiring  players  to  reproduce 
on  a  mimic  stage  a  similar  murder 
and  so  betrays  the  king  into  a  virtual 
confession.  Even  now  he  delays 
action  by  every  thinnest  pretext. 
He  will  not  kill  the  king  when  he 
comes  upon  him  at  prayer  lest  his 
soul  be  saved  thereby.  Yet  a  few 
minutes  later,  surprised  by  a  sudden 
impulse  of  suspicion,  he  kills  Polonius, 
who  is  concealed  behind  an  arras, 
and  therefore  invisible.  Treacher- 
ously stabbed  at  last  by  Laertes' 
poisoned  foil,  Hamlet  exchanges 
weapons  in  the  scuffle,  wounds 
Laertes  and  then,  learning  of  the 
poison  and  of  ^  his  own  imminent 
death,  seeing  niin  and  destruction  all 
around  him,  he  plunges  the  weapon 
into  the  heart  of  Claudius. 

No  one  of  mortal  mould  (save  Him 
"whose  blessed  feet  were  nailed  for  our 
advantage  to  the  bitter  cross")  ever  trod 
this  earth,  commanding  such  absorbing 
interest  as  this  Hamlet,  this  mere  creation 
of  a  poet's  brain.  No  syllable  that  he 
whispers,  no  word  let  fall  by  any  one  near 
him  but  is  caught  and  pondered  as  no  words 
ever  have  been  except  of  Holy  Writ.  Upon 
no  throne  built  by  mortal  hands  has  ever 
"beat  so  fierce  a  light  "as  upon  that  airy 
fabric  reared  at  Elsinore.— H.  H.  Furness. 

To  me  it  is  clear  that  Shakespeare  sought 
to  depict  a  great  deed  laid  upon  a  soul 
unequal  to  the  performance  of  it.  In  this 
view  I  find  the  piece  composed  throughout. 
Here  is  an  oak  tree  planted  in  a  costly  vase, 
which  should  have  received  into  its  bosom 
only  lovely  flowers;  the  roots  spread  out, 
the  vase  is  shivered  to  pieces. — Goethe: 
Wilhelm  Meister. 

It  is  an  inherent  peculiarity  of  a  mind  like 
Hamlet's  that  it  should  be  conscious  of  its 
own  defect.  Men  of  his  type  are  forever 
analyzing  their  own  emotions  and  motives. 
They  cannot  do  anything,  because  they  are 
always  as  it  were  standing  at  the  cross- 
roads, and  see  too  well  the  disadvantages 
of  every  one  of  them.  It  is  not  that  they 
are  incapable  of  resolve,  but  somehow  the 


Hamlet 


184 


Handy  Andy 


band  between  the  motive  power  and  the 
operative  faculties  is  relaxed  and  loose.  The 
engine  works,  but  the  machinery  it  should 
drive  stands  still.  .  .  .  (Hamlet)  is  the 
victim  not  so  much  of  feebleness  of  will  as 
of  an  intellectual  indifference  that  hinders 
the  will  from  working  long  in  any  one  direc- 
tion. He  wishes  to  will,  but  never  wills. 
His  continual  iteration  of  resolve  shows  that 
he  has  no  resolution.  He  is  capable  of  pas- 
sionate energy  where  the  occasion  presents 
itself  suddenly  from  without,  because  noth- 
ing is  so  irritating  as  conscious  irresolution 
with  a  duty  to  perform.  But  of  deliberate 
energy  he  is  not  capable,  for  there  the  im- 
pulse must  come  from  within  and  the  blade 
of  his  analysis  is  so  subtle  that  it  can  divide 
the  finest  hair  of  motive  twixt  north  and 
northwest  side,  leaving  him  desperate 
to  chose  between  them. — ^J.  R.  Lowell: 
Shakespeare  Once  More. 

Hamlet,  Young,  in  George  Eliot's 
satirical  poem,  A  College  Breakfast 
Party,  the  chief  guest  at  Horatio's 
table: 

Blond  metaphysical  and  sensuous . 
Questioning  all  things,  and  yet  half  con- 
vinced 
Credulity  were  better;  held  inert 
Twixt  fascinations  of  all  oppwDsites 
And  half  suspecting  that  the  mightiest  soul 
(Perhaps  his  own?)  was  union  of  extremes. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the 
portrait  was  drawn  from  William 
Hurrell  Mallock. 

Hamlin,  Jack,  i.e.,  John,  in  Bret 
Harte's  Gabriel  Conroy  and  in  several 
of  his  short  tales,  a  professional  gam- 
bler of  amiable  disposition  and  gentle- 
manly manners  who,  despite  his  ex- 
terior air  of  gayety,  is  deeply  dissatis- 
fied with  his  lawless  and  predatory 
manner  of  existence.  In  Bohemian 
Days  in  San  Francisco  Bret  Harte 
gives  some  account  of  a  real  person 
who  doubtless  was  Jack  Hamlin's 
prototype  as  well  as  John  Oakhurst's 
(q.v.).  Harte  describes  his  handsome 
face,  his  pale  southern  look,  his  slight 
figure,  the  scrupulous  elegance  and 
neatness  of  his  dress,  his  genial  man- 
ner and  the  nonchalance  with  which 
he  set  out  for  the  duel  that  ended  in 
his  death. 

The  type  was  a  new  one  and  it  completely 
revolutionized  the  ideal  of  the  gambler 
which  had  long  obtained  both  in  fiction  and 
on  the  stage.  As  a  London  critic  very  neatly 
said,  with  this  dainty  and  delicate  California 
desperado  Bret  Harte  banished  forever  the 
turgid  villains  of  Ainsworth  and  Lytton.— 
H.  C.  Mkrwin:    Life  of  Bret  HarU. 


Han,  hero  of  a  romance,  Han  of 
Iceland  (Fr.  Han  d'Islande,  1823),  by 
Victor  Hugo.  Claiming  descent  from 
Ingulph  the  Exterminator,  a  monster 
of  hoary  antiquity  famous  for  his 
hatred  of  mankind  except  as  articles 
of  uncooked  food,  he  carries  out  the 
family  traditions  imder  modem  die- 
tary restrictions,  especially  after  the 
loss  of  his  son,  and  finally,  sated  with 
carnage,  arson,  and  pillage,  he  sur- 
renders himself  to  justice.  Address- 
ing his  judges  he  says,  "  I  have 
committed  more  murders  and  set 
more  fires  than  you  have  pronounced 
imjust  judments  in  all  your  fives. 
.  .  .^  I  would  gladly  drink  the 
blood  in  your  veins.  It  is  my  nature 
to  hate  men,  my  mission  to  harm 
them.  Colonel,  it  is  I  who  crashed  a 
battaUion  of  your  regiment  with  frag- 
ments of  rock.  I  was  avenging  my 
son.  .  .  .  Now,  judges,  my  son 
is  dead;  I  come  here  to  seek  death. 
.  .  .  I  am  tired  of  life,  since  it 
cannot  be  a  lesson  and  an  exam- 
ple to  a  successor.  I  have  drunk 
enough  blood,  I  am  no  longer 
thirsty;  ^  now,  here  I  am,  you  can 
drink  mine." 

He  is  accordingly  condemned  to 
death.  Finding  the  ordinary  pro- 
cesses of  justice  too  tardy,  however, 
and  being,  as  we  have  seen,  of  an 
impetuous  disposition,  he  sets  fire  to 
his  prison  and  perishes  in  the  flames 
with  his  few  surviving  enemies. 

Handy  Andy,  the  nickname  of 
Andy  Rooney,  the  deus  ex  machina  in 
Samuel  Lover's  novel  of  Irish  life, 
Handy  Andy  (1842).  It  was  given 
to  him  in  pure  irony  because,  in  the 
author's  own  words,  Andy  "  had  the 
most  singularly  ingenious  knack  of 
doing  everything  the  wrong  way." 
By  his  inveterate  blundering  he  fur- 
nishes matter  aHke  for  mirth  and 
wrath  to  all  who  are  in  any  way  con- 
nected with  him.  Yet  in  the  end  his 
very  blundering  saves  the  situation 
and  turns  the  tables  against  villainy 
in  favor  of  virtue  and  honesty,  so  that 
all  his  world  rejoices  with  him  when 
Andy  proves  to  be  the  lawful  heir  to 
the  title  and  estates  of  Lord  Scatter- 
brain   and   weds   his   pretty   cousin 


Happy  Valley 


185 


Harlowe 


Oonah  despite  all  matrimonial  com- 
plications brought  about  by  his  own 
recklessness. 

Happy  Valley,  in  Dr.  Johnson's 
oriental  romance,  Rasselus,  an  abode 
of  continual  but  monotonous  felicity, 
which  Rasselus  abandons  in  the 
search  for  more  strenuous  joys.  He 
retums  to  it  thoroughly  disillusioned 
with  the  outside  world. 

Harapha  of  Gath,  a  character, 
original  with  Milton,  in  his  dramatic 
poem  of  Samson  Agonistes.  Harapha 
scofifs  at  Samson  in  his  chains,  but  is 
afraid  of  his  strength  and  keeps  at  a 
safe  distance. 

Hardcastle,  Squire,  in  Goldsmith's 
comedy,  She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  a 
jovial,  generous,  but  prosy  country 
gentleman,  old-fashioned  himself  and 
fond,  as  he  says,  of  "  everything  that's 
old — old  friends,  old  manners,  old 
times,  old  books,  old  wine"  (Act  i, 
Sc.  I ) .  His  wife,  Lady  Hardcastle,  on 
the  other  hand  is  fond  of  the  latest 
fashions  and  the  genteelest  society, 
but  never  having  been  in  London  has 
scant  opportunity  for  enjoying  either. 
By  her  first  marriage  she  is  the  mother 
of  Tony  Lumpkin;  her  second  has 
yielded  her  a  daughter,  Kate  Hard- 
castle, who  "  stoops  '*  to  conquer 
Young  Marlow  {q.v.). 

Hardy,  Letitia,  the  epon3rmic 
"belle"  in  The  Belle's  Stratagem 
(1780)  by  Mrs.  Cowley.  Daughter 
to  the  fond  and  foolish  but  well- 
meaning  Mr.  Hardy,  Lydia  is  affi- 
anced to  Doricourt,  a  fashionable 
man  about  town,  elegant  and  vola- 
tile, but  essentially  honorable,  who 
irks  at  the  bondage  of  an  enforced 
betrothal.  To  win  his  love  she 
appears  in  disguise  at  a  masquerade, 
and  Doricourt  falls  an  easy  victim 
to  "the  beautiful  stranger."  Old 
Hardy  now  feigns  sickness  and  from 
his  pretended  deathbed  urges  Dori- 
court to  an  immediate  marriage.  He 
unwillingly  consents.  His  chagrin 
is  changed  to  joy  when  Letitia  appears 
in  her  masquerade  dress  and  reveals 
the  "  stratagem." 

Harleth,  Gwendolen,  the  principal 
female  character  in  George  Eliot's 
novel,    Daniel   Deronda    (1876).     A 


beautiful  young  lady,  hard,  cold, 
brilliant,  misled  by  worldly  considera- 
tions into  a  loveless  marriage  with 
the  *  middle-aged  Mallinger  Grand- 
court,  who  is  harder  and  colder  than 
herself.  He  reduces  her  to  such  chao- 
tic despair  that  when  he  is  accident- 
ally drowning  she  withholds  the  hand 
that  might  have  rescued  him.  She 
is  ultimately  saved,  "  as  though  by 
fire"  through  her  unretumed  love 
for  Daniel  Deronda.  Gwendolen  is 
akin  to  Rosamond  Vincy  in  Middle- 
march — as  selfish,  as  dead  to  duty 
and  tenderness,  as  confident  and 
unscrupulous. 

Rosamond  Is  perhaps  more  consistently 
selfish,  after  the  common  idea;  but  there  is 
an  intense,  enduring  strength  of  egotism  in 
Gwendolen  which  is  surely  not  less  repulsive. 
Gwendolen,  however,  has  this  superiority 
conferred  upon  her,  that  she  is  not  one  of 
the  narrow-brained  women  who  through 
life  regard  all  their  own  selfish  demands  as 
rights.  She  has  a  root  of  conscience  in  her. 
But  the  reader  cannot  forget  that  this  con- 
science was  never  aroused,  and  to  all  appear- 
ance never  would  have  been  aroused,  till 
Deronda 's  eye  rested  on  her;  and  he  is  not 
willing  to  see  the  great  moral  difference 
between  one  outside  conscience  and  another, 
between  being  guided  by  the  opinion  of 
society  and  being  guided  by  the  judgment 
of  one  extremely  attractive  person.  Rosa- 
mond dreads  being  despised  by  the  world. 
Gwendolen  is  always  saying  to  Deronda, 
"You  despise  me,"  and  is  represented  as 
learning  to  despise  herself  through  his  eyes. 
But  interesting  young  men  are  not  always 
impersonations  of  the  Law  and  the  Gospel, 
and  the  world  would  be  no  gainer  were 
Gwendolen's  way  of  deferring  to  a  single 
conscience  Invested  with  such  attractive 
externals,  rather  than  to  the  aggregate  con- 
science of  society,  to  become  the  generally 
accepted  rule. — London  Saturday  Review, 
September  23,  1876. 

Harley,  or  Young  Harley,  hero  of 
Henry  McKenzie's  novel,  A  Man  of 
Feeling  (1771),^  a  youth  of  the  most 
exquisite  sensitiveness,  a  mere  bundle 
of  nerves  forever  quivering^  on  the 
verge  of  collapse.  Loving  his  neigh- 
bor's daughter.  Miss  Walton,  he  is 
too  shy  to  avow  his  passion  until  he 
is  bedfast,  and  when  his  lady  accepts 
him  he  dies  of  the  shock. 

Harlowe,  Clarissa,  heroine  and 
title  of  a  novel  by  Samuel  Richardson 
( 1 75 1 ) .  Having  drawn  in  Pamela  the 
portrait  of  a  poor  girl  subjected  to 
temptation,    Richardson    here    sub- 


Harold 


186 


Harper 


mits  a  young  lady  to  similar  experi- 
ences. Clarissa  belongs  to  a  good 
country  family  in  eighteenth  century 
England.  She  is  wooed  by  the  notori- 
ous profligate  Lovelace,  whose  suit 
is  frowned  upon  by  the  Harlowes,  in- 
cluding at  first  even  Clarissa  herself. 
But  she  is  secretly  taken  by  his  dash- 
ing ways.  He  succeeds  in  abducting 
her  and  so  seriously  compromising  her 
that  she  dies  of  shame.  Lovelace 
(q.v.)  is  killed  in  a  duel  by  her  cousin, 
Colonel  Morden. 

All  incomplete  as  she  is,  she  remains  the 
Eve  of  fiction,  the  prototype  of  the  modern 
heroine,  the  common  mother  of  all  the  self- 
contained,  self-suffering,  self-satisfied  young 
persons  whose  delicacies  and  repugnances, 
whose  independence  of  mind  and  body, 
whose  airs  and  ideas  and  imaginings  are  the 
stuff  of  the  modern  novel.  With  her  begins 
a  new  ideal  of  womanhood;  from  her  pro- 
ceeds a  type  unknown  in  fact  and  fiction 
until  she  came.  When  after  outrage  she 
declines  to  marry  her  destroyer  and  pre- 
fers death  to  the  condonation  of  her  dis- 
honor, she  strikes  a  note  and  assumes  a  posi- 
tion till  then  not  merely  unrecognized  but 
absolutely  undiscovered. — W.  E.  Henley: 
Views  and  Reviews,  p.  221. 

Harold,  Childe,  the  titular  hero  of 
Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage^  a  narra- 
tive and  descriptive  poem  by  Lord 
Byron.  Cantos  i  and  2  appeared  in 
1 8 12.  Childe  Harold  (evidently 
Byron's  own  ideal  of  himself)  is  a 
gloomy,  haughty,  imperious  youth, 
the  freshness  of  whose  feelings  has 
been  exhausted  in  a  round  of  unholy 
pleasure.  Satiated  and  heart-sick, 
he  leaves  behind  him  his  lemans  and 
his  fellow  bacchanals,  bids  farewell 
to  England,  and  wanders  over  the 
continent  of  Europe,  viewing  its  fair- 
est scenes  with  the  abstracted  gaze 
of  one  who  is  in  them  but  not  of 
them,  whose  thoughts  are  not  the 
thoughts  of  other  men,  who  has  risen 
superior  to  either  hope  or  fear.  Yet 
through  all  this  affection  of  scowling 
cynicism  Byron  shows  that  his  heart 
can  still  beat  high  with  generous  en- 
thusiasm for  what  is  great,  beautiful 
and  heroic,  his  nerves  still  tingle 
with  contempt  for  what  is  base  and 
ignoble. 

Harpagon,  the  titular  "  Miser  "  in 
Moli^re's  comedy,  L'Avare  (1667), 
an   impersonation   of   grasping   and 


rascally  parsimony  painted  from  the 
comic  rather  than  the  tragic  side. 
The  cimning  folly  of  his  economics, 
the  bewildered  stupidity  that  residts 
from  his  absorption  in  one  idea;  the 
violent  despair  into  which  he  is 
thrown  by  the  supposed  loss  of  his 
treasure-box— all  are  suffused  with 
so  broad  a  light  of  humor  that  they 
leave  no  sting  behind  them;  you  feel 
only  kindness  for  a  character  that 
has  furnished  so  much  fun.  His  own 
man-of-all-work,  under  pressure  from 
the  miser  himself,  thus  reports  some 
current  tales: 

"One  neighbour  says  that  you  have  pri- 
vate almanacks  printed,  in  which  you  double 
the  ember-days  and  vigils  in  order  to  oblige 
your  household  to  observe  more  fasts  than 
others;  another,  that  you  have  always  a 
quarrel  ready  to  pick  with  your  servants  at 
"boxing"  time,  or  when  they  are  leaving 
you,  so  as  to  have  a  pretext  for  giving  them 
nothing.  Another  says  that  you  once  had 
a  warrant  out  against  the  cat  of  one  of  your 
neighbours  for  having  eaten  up  the  remains 
of  a  leg  of  mutton;  another,  that  you  were 
caught  one  night  coming  to  steal  yovir  own 
horse's  oats,  and  that  your  coachman — my 
predecessor — gave  you,  in  the  dark,  I  don't 
know  how  many  blows  with  a  stick,  about 
which  you  never  said  anything." 

The  Avare  of  Moliere,  though  taken  from 
the  Aulalaria  of  Plautus,  differs  widely  from 
the  Latin  piece.  Plautus's  Miser  is  a  man 
who  loves  gold  for  its  own  sake,  for  the  sake 
of  amassing  it,  hoarding  it  up,  and  reserving 
it  for  solitary  enjoyment,  whereas  Harpa- 
gon,  to  the  pure  love  of  gold  adds  also  the 
love  of  lucre,  and  to  bring  in  more  money 
will  part  with,  and  put  in  circulation,  that 
which  he  already  possesses.  He  is  a  usurer, 
and  there  lies  the  essential  difference  be- 
tween the  miser  of  Plautus  and  the  Avare 
of  Moliere.  It  is  the  difference  between 
avarice  and  avidity. — Edinburgh  Review. 

Harper,  in  Cooper's  novel,  The 
Spy:  the  name  under  which  George 
Washington  hides  his  personality. 

Cooper  cannot  be  congratulated  upon  his 
success  in  the  few  attempts  he  has  made  to 
represent  historical  personages.  Washing- 
ton, as  shown  to  us  in  The  Spy,  is  a  formal 
piece  of  mechanism,  as  destitute  of  vital 
character  as  Maelzel's  automaton  trumpeter. 
This,  we  admit,  was  a  very  difficult  subject, 
alike  from  the  peculiar  traits  of  Washington, 
and  from  the  reverence  in  which  his  name 
and  memory  are  held  by  his  countrymen. 
Harper  under  which  name  Washington  Is 
introduced,  appears  in  only  two  or  three 
scenes;  but,  during  these,  we  hear  so  much 
of  the  solemnity  and  impressiveness  of  his 
manner,  the  gravity  of  his  brow,  the  steadi- 
ness of  his  gaze,  that  we  get  the  notion  of  a 


Harrington 


187 


Harrison 


rather  oppressive  personage,  and  sympathize 
with  the  satisfaction  of  the  Whartons,  when 
he  retires  to  his  own  room,  and  relieves  them 
of  his  tremendous  presence. 

Harrington,  hero  and  title  of  a 
novel  by  Maria  Edgeworth,  whose 
object  is  to  raise  the  Jewish  race  in 
the  estimation  of  English  readers. 
The  theme  was  suggested  by  an 
American  correspondent,  a  Miss 
Mordecai,  who  gently  reproached 
Miss  Edgeworth  for  having  so  often 
made  Jews  ridiculous  and  begged 
that  she  would  write  a  story  about 
an  estimable  Jew.  The  theme  lay 
outside  of  her  own  experience  and 
she  had  to  evolve  a  Jew  out  of  her 
own  moral  consciousness  who  was 
unsatisfactory  even  to  the  Jews.  So 
says  Miss  Zimmem,  herself  a  Jewess: 

Her  zeal  outran  her  judgment;  her  elabor- 
ate apology  is  feeble;  and  if  the  Jews  needed 
vindication  they  could  hardly  be  flattered 
by  one  of  this  nature,  for  she  does  not  intro- 
duce us  to  a  true  Jew  at  all.  Her  views 
were  based  upon  that  rare  and  beautiful 
character,  Moses  Mendelssohn,  a  character 
as  little  typical  of  the  Jewish  as  of  any  other 
race  or  religious  creed,  but  common  to  all 
men  who  think  and  feel  philosophically  and 
have  raised  themselves  above  the  petty 
prejudices  of  mankind.  This  was  as  much 
as  to  say  that  only  a  Jew  who  was  no 
Jew  was  admirable  and  estimable. — Helen 
Zimmern:    Maria  Edgeworth,  p.  i68. 

Harrington,  Evan,  hero  and  title  of 
a  novel  (1861)  by  George  Meredith. 
Like  Meredith  himself  Evan  is  the 
son  of  a  tailor,  most  mirth-provoking 
of  trades;  but  he  has  the  fortune  or 
misfortune  to  have  been  bred  as  a 
gentleman  and  to  have  the  instincts 
and  manners  that  go  _  with  gentle 
birth.  Half  against  his  will  he  is 
taken  for  a  member  of  a  well-known 
family  bearing  the  same  name,  is  wel- 
comed to  the  house  of  a  baronet  and 
the  heart  of  a  baronet's  daughter.  The 
tailor  wins  the  lady  in  the  character 
of  a  gentleman.  Rose's  maid  kindly 
informs  him  how  her  mistress  shud- 
dered when  she  repeated  to  herself 
the  awful  word  "  snip  "  which  some 
malignant  who  suspected  the  truth 
had  suggested  in  regard  to  her  lover. 
But  whenever  honesty  distinctly 
bids  him  to  own  he  is  a  tailor  he  does 
so,  and  after  he  has  been  led  by  love 
to  avow  his  passion  he  summons  up 


his  courage  and  tells  Rose  he  is  the 
snip  she  detests.  She  is  all  frankness, 
loyalty  and  generosity,  vows  she  will 
never  desert  him,  and  goes  straight 
to  her  parents  to  inform  them  that 
a  tailor  is  to  be  their  son-in-law. 

Harris,  George,  in  Mrs.  H.  B. 
Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  a  mu- 
latto slave  on  a  Kentucky  estate. 
His  wife  Eliza  is  sold  to  an  alien  and 
distant  owner.  Both  he  and  she  run 
away — to  meet  at  last  on  the  free  soil 
of  Canada.  He  is  "  possessed  of  a 
handsome  person  and  pleasing  man- 
ners "  and  such  "  adroitness  and 
ingenuity  "  that  he  has  "  invented  a 
machine  for  the  cleaning  of  hemp, 
which  displays  quite  as  much  mechan- 
ical genius  as  Whitney's  cotton  gin." 
Naturally  he  finds  disguise  easy. 
Here  is  how  he  looks  when  on  the 
second  day  of  his  flight  he  aHghts  at 
a  Kentucky  hotel: 

"He  was  very  tall,  with  a  very  dark 
Spanish  complexion,  fine  expressive  black 
eyes,  and  close  curling  hair,  also  of  a  glossy 
blackness.  His  well-formed  aquiline  nose, 
straight  thin  lips,  and  the  admirable  contour 
of  his  finely  formed  limbs,  impressed  the 
whole  company  instantly  with  the  idea  of 
something  uncommon." 

Harris,  Mrs.,  in  Dickens's  Martin 
Chuzdewii,  an  alleged  friend  of  Mrs. 
Gamp,  whom  she  was  continually 
citing  in  approval  of  her  own  acts 
or  in  illustration  of  some  point  at 
issue,  but  whom  no  one  in  her  circle 
of  acquaintance  had  ever  seen  and 
who  was  finally  disposed  of  by  Mrs. 
Prig  in  the  famous  phrase,  "  I  don't 
believe  there's  no  sich  a  person." 

"Bother  Mrs.  Harris!"  said  Betsey  Prig. 

Mrs.  Gamp  looked  at  her  with  amaze- 
ment, incredulity,  and  indignation;  when 
Mrs.  Prig,  shutting  her  eye  still  closer,  and 
folding  her  arms  still  tighter,  uttered  these 
memorable  and  tremendous  words: — 

"I  don't  believe  there's  no  sich  a  person  I" 

After  the  utterance  of  which  expressions, 
she  leaned  forward,  and  snapped  her  fingers 
once,  twice,  thrice,  each  time  nearer  to  the 
face  of  Mrs.  Gamp;  and  then  rose  to  put 
on  her  bonnet,  as  one  who  felt  that  there 
was  now  a  gulf  between  them  which  nothing 
could  ever  bridge  across. — Martin  Chuzzlewit. 

Harrison,  Rev.  Dr.,  in  Fielding's 
novel,  Amelia,  a  model  parson,  "  well 
worthy,"  say^  the  author,  "  of  the 
cloth  he  wore,  and  that  is  I  think,  the 


Harum 


188 


Hazard 


highest  character  a  man  can  attain." 
Half  his  fortune  he  has  given  away 
or  been  defrauded  of  by  the  plausible 
tales  of  insidious  friends.  Yet  he  can 
be  just  and  even  stem  when  he  knows 
he  is  right.  He  takes  in  execution  the 
goods  and  person  of  his  friend  Booth 
because  Booth,  while  pleading  pov- 
erty, was  buying  expensive  jewelry. 

Harum,  David,  the  principal  char- 
acter in  a  novel  of  that  name  (1898) 
by  Edward  Noyes  Westcott,  a  banker 
and  dealer  in  horses  in  a  village  in 
Central  New  York  who  possesses  a 
shrewdness,  humor  and  homely 
philosophy  that  _  temper  his  utter 
lack  of  principle  in  horse-selling  and 
horse-trading,  and  who  can  and  does 
rise  to  occasional  heights  of  charity 
and  self-abnegation  of  which  he  is 
bashfully  reticent. 

Harvey,  Belinda,  titular  heroine  of 
Belinda  (1803),  a  novel  by  Maria 
Edgeworth.  While  spending  a  winter 
in  London  with  Lady  Delacour,  a 
brilliant  and  fashionable  woman,  she 
meets  Clarence  Harvey.  Mutual 
love  attracts,  mutual  distrust  sets 
them  apart.  Not  till  the .  resultant 
comedy  of  cross  purposes  has  in- 
volved the  entire  Delacour  household 
is  the  tangle  straightened  out,  and  a 
reconciliation  effected. 

Hatchway,  Lieutenant  Jack,  a 
retired  naval  officer,  on  half-pay,  in 
Smollett's  novel.  The  Adventures  of 
Peregrine  Pickle.  He  is  represented 
as  living  with  Commodore  Trunnion 
as  a  companion. 

He  who  can  read  the  calamities  of  Trun- 
nion and  Hatchway,  when  run  away  with 
by  their  mettled  steeds,  .  .  .  without 
a  good  hearty  burst  of  honest  laughter,  must 
be  well  qualified  to  look  sad  and  gentleman- 
like with  Lord  Chesterfield  or  Master 
Stephen.— Sir  W.  Scott. 

Havisham,  Miss,  in  Dickens's  Great 
Expectations  (i860),  the  foster  mother 
of  the  heroine  Estella.  She  lived  a 
hermit  life  in  her  magnificent  but 
neglected  home,  Satis  House,  left  to 
her  by  her  father,  a  wealthy  brewer. 
A  great  tragedy  had  ruined  her  life. 
She  had  been  engaged  to  be  married 
to  a  man  she  passionately  loved, 
Compeyson,   a   showy   and   shallow 


gallant,  who  jilted  her  on  the  ap- 
pointed wedding  day.  She  received 
the  fatal  letter  when  she  was  dressing 
for  church.  Her  Hfe  was  despaired 
of.  When  she  recovered  from  a  long 
illness,  she  laid  waste  her  heritage, 
stopped  all  the  clocks  at  twenty 
minutes  to  nine — the  time  of  her 
receiving  the  letter — and  never  after- 
wards looked  upon  the  light  of  day. 

Hawk,  Sir  Mulberry,  in  Dickens's 
Nicholas  Nickleby  (1838),  a  gambler 
and  a  rou6  "  especially  remarkable 
for  his  tact  in  ruining  yoimg  gentle- 
men of  forttme.  .  .  .  He  made 
them  his  butts  in  a  double  sense  for 
he  emptied  them  with  good  address, 
and  made  them  the  laughing  stocks 
of  society."  (Chap,  xix.)  He  fails 
in  his  efforts  to  seduce  Kate  Nickleby 
and  is  soundly  thrashed  by  Nicholas. 
Later  he  fights  a  duel  with  his  head 
pupil  and  chief  dupe.  Lord  Frederick 
Verisopht,  in  which  the  latter  is  lolled. 

Hawthorn,  Jerry,  one  of  the  heroes 
of  Pierce  Egan,  Jr's.  Life  in  London, 
or  the  Day  and  Night  Scenes  of  Jerry 
Hawthorn  and  Corinthian  Tom  (1824) 
— a  collection  of  sketches  describing 
the  sports  and  amusements  of  London 
in  the  days  of  the  Regency.  Illus- 
trated by  George  Cruikshank,  it  had 
enormous  contemporary  vogue.  A 
drink  called  Tom  and  Jerry  is  still 
compounded  in  American  bar-rooms. 

Hayes,  Catherine,  notorious  in 
English  criminal  annals,  who  was 
burned  alive  in  1726  for  the  murder 
of  her  husband,  is  the  heroine  of 
Thackeray's  novel  Catherine. 

Hazard,  Myrtle,  heroine  of  Dr. 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes's  novel.  The 
Gttardian  Angel.  The  descendant 
from  ancestors  of  divergent  races  and 
characteristics,  herself  bom  in  the 
tropical  climate  of  oriental  India,  she 
is  brought  up  from  the  age  of  fifteen 
in  the  New  England  village  of  Oxbow 
by  an  austere  and  provincial  aunt, 
who  utterly  fails  to  understand  her 
or  to  curb  her.  Fortunately  she  falls 
by  accident  under  the  care  of  Profes- 
sor Gridley,  whom  she  rightly  calls 
her  Guardian  Angel,  and  her  final 
reformation  is  wrought  by  her  ex- 
periences as  a  hospital  nurse  during 


Headlong 


189 


Heep 


the  Civil  War.  "  In  the  offices  of 
mercy  which  she  performed  .  .  . 
the  dross  of  her  nature  seemed  to  be 
burned  away.  The  conflict  of  mingled 
lives  in  her  blood  had  ceased." 
Myrtle  is  especially  interesting  as  the 
first  character  of  fiction  in  wWch  the 
dual  influences  of  heredity  are  dis- 
cussed by  a  scientist  of  literary  ability. 

Headlong,  Squire,  the  hero  of 
Headlong  Hall  (1815),  a  novel  by 
Thomas  Love  Peacock,  which  is  more 
a  series  of  discussions  on  life  and 
letters  than  a  connected  narrative. 
The  principal  interlocutors  are  a  per- 
fectibiUan,  a  deteriorationist,  a  statu- 
quo-ite  and  a  reverend  doctor  who 
has  won  the  squire's  fancy  by  a 
learned  dissertation  on  the  art  of 
stuffing  a  turkey.  The  squire  him- 
self is  an  amiable  eccentric  whose 
special  fad  is  the  collection  and  ex- 
ploitation of  himaan  curios. 

Headrigg,  Cuddle  (i.e.,  Cuthbert), 
in  Walter  Scott's  novel,  Old  Mortality, 
a  ploughman  in  Lady  Bellenden's 
service;  a  mixture  of  "  apparent 
dulness  with  occasional  sparkles 
which  indicated  the  craft  so  often 
found  in  the  clouted  shoe." 

Heath,  Sir  Massingbird,  in  James 
Payn's  novel  Lost  Sir  Massinghird 
(1864),  a  Georgian  rou6  who  had 
hobnobbed  with  royalty  itself  as 
represented  by  the  Prince  Regent 
and  returned  financially  ruined  to 
Fairbum  HaU,  an  entailed  estate  of 
which  he  could  not  dispose  save  by 
the  death  of  the  heir-presumptive, 
his  nephew  Marmaduke  Heath,  who 
is  carefully  shielded  from  his  evil 
designs  by  the  lad's  friends.  In  his 
hot  youth  Sir  Massingbird  had 
secretly  married  a  gipsy  whom  he 
drove  mad  with  his  cruelty.  She 
laid  on  him  the  curse,  "  May  he 
perish  inch  by  inch  within  reach  of 
aid  that  shall  not  come."  The  curse 
was  fulfilled  in  his  old  age.  He  dis- 
appeared mysteriously  and  months 
later  his  bones  were  found  in  an  old 
oak  tree.  It  was  supposed  that  he 
had  climbed  the  tree  to  look  around 
for  poachers,  and  that  a  misstep  had 
precipitated  him  into  the  hollow 
trunk. 


Heathcliff,  hero  of  Emily  Bronte's 
novel,  Wathering  Heights  (1847),  a 
man  of  stormy,  imtrained  nature, 
brought  as  a  child  to  Wathering 
Heights,  the  owner  of  which,  Mr. 
Earnshaw,  had  picked  him  up  as  a 
stray  in  the  streets  of  Liverpool.  His 
affection  is  as  terrifying  as  is  his 
hatred ;  despairing  but  unconquered  he 
starves  himself  at  last,  djring  with  a 
sneer  on  his  lips,  and  is  buried  beside 
the  woman  he  had  loved  and  tortured 
— a  side  of  whose  cofl&n  he  had  torn 
away  years  before. 

"  How  did  you  contrive  to  preserve 
the  common  sympathies  of  human 
nature  when  you  resided  here? " 
writes  Heathcliff 's  young  bride  to  the 
old  servant.  "  I  cannot  recognize  any 
sentiment  which  those  around  share 
with  me.  ...  Is  Mr.  Heath- 
cliff  a  man?  "  And  at  the  end  the 
servant  herself,  who  tells  the  story, 
asks:  "  Is  he  a  ghoul  or  a  vampire? 
.  .  .  Where  did  he  come  from, 
the  dark  little  thing,  harbored  by  a 
good  man  to  his  bane?  "  Cruelty, 
and  not  love,  cruelty  of  the  living  and 
of  the  dead,  is  the  master  passion  of 
the  book.  If  one  were  looking  for  a 
parallel  to  the  sufferings  of  those  who 
are  the  sport  of  this  inhuman  passion, 
it  would  be  found  in  the  diabolism 
that  surrounds  Webster's  Duchess  of 
Malfi: 

I'll  tell  thee  a  miracle;  " 

I  am  not  mad  yet,  to  my  cause  of  sorrow. 

Hebron,  in  the  first  part  of  Absa- 
lom and  Achitophel,  by  Dry  den, 
stands  for  Holland,  but  in  the  second 
part,  by  Tate,  it  stands  for  Scotland. 

Heep,  Uriah,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copper  field  (1894),  a  repugnant  h3rpo- 
crite  and  sneak,  clerk  to  Mr.  Wick- 
field.  Under  a  cloak  of  abject  humil- 
ity he  hides  a  jealous,  malignant, 
meddlesome  disposition.  His  evil 
designs  are  frustrated  by  Mr. 
Micawber. 

"I  am  well  aware  that  I  am  the  umblest 
person  going,  let  the  other  be  who  he  may. 
My  mother  is  likewise  a  vtry  umble  person. 
We  live  in  a  ntmible  abode.  Master  Copper- 
field,  but  have  much  to  be  thankful  for. 
My  father's  former  calling  was  umble;  he 
was  a  sexton." — David  Copper  field.  Chap, 
xvi. 


Helbeck  of  Bannisdale 


190 


Helena 


Heep,  articled  clerk,  articled  out  of 
charity  whom  to  describe  description  fails; 
he  is  a  sinister,  crouching,  fawning  imp  of 
humility;  viperous  in  soul  and  body;  long- 
fingered  and  splay-footed  and  red-eyed 
with  damp  exudations  of  the  cuticle,  a 
frog-like  hand;  altogether  a  "moist,  un- 
wholesome body." — London  Times. 

Helbeck  of  Bannisdale,  hero  and 
title  of  a  novel  by  Mrs.  Humphry- 
Ward  (1898).  He  is  an  English 
Catholic  of  ancient  lineage,  great 
wealth  and  corresponding  responsi- 
bilities. The  novel  portrays  with 
insight  and  skill  the  spiritual  battle 
that  an  austere  and  devout  Catholic 
must  fight  before  he  can  yield  so  far 
to  passion  as  to  contemplate  mar- 
riage with  a  girl  who  not  only  has  no 
knowledge  of  and  no  sympathy  with 
any  religion,  but  has  inherited  a  posi- 
tive scorn  for  the  Catholic  faith  and 
an  impertinent  contempt  for  the 
rules  and  ceremonies  of  the  Church. 
Poor  little  Laura  Fountain,  equally 
troubled,  cuts  the  knot  by  committing 
suicide. 

Heldar,  Dick  (i.e.,  Richard),  hero 
of  Rudyard  Kipling's  novel  The  Light 
that  Failed  (1896).  An  English  artist, 
an  orphan  who  had  been  brought  up 
with  another  waif  called  Maisie  by 
the  hard-hearted  Mrs.  Jennett.  In 
early  manhood  he  goes  to  the  front 
as  a  war-artist,  and  receives  a  sabre 
cut  which  threatens  his  eyesight.  He 
determines  to  produce  one  great 
masterpiece  before  he  goes  blind. 
The  light  fails  just  as  he  has  finished 
his  picture,  and  that  is  destroyed  by  a 
model  who  owes  him  a  grudge. 
Maisie  refuses  to  marry  him.  Dark- 
ness of  mind  and  body  settled  down 
upon  him,  and  he  sacrifices  his  life 
in  the  Soudan. 

Helen,  heroine  of  a  ballad,  Sister 
Helen  (1870),  by  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti.  The  tale  is  supposed  to  be 
told  by  her  little  sister. 

A  girl  forsaken  by  her  highborn  lover 
turns  to  sorcery  for  help  in  her  revenge  on 
him;  and  with  the  end  of  the  third  day  come 
three  suppliants,  the  father  and  the  brothers 
of  the  betrayer,  to  whom  he  has  shown  the 
secret  of  his  wasting  agony,  if  haply  they 
may  bring  him  back,  not  life,  but  forgiveness 
at  her  hands.  Dying  herself  of  anguish 
with  him  and  with  the  molten  figure  of  her 
making,  she  will  remit  nothing  of  her  great 
revenge;  body  and  soul  of  both  shall  perish 


in  one  four-fold  death:  and  her  answers 
pass,  ever  more  and  more  bitter  and  ardent 
through  the  harmless  mouthpiece  of  a  child. 
— Swinburne. 

Helen,  subject  and  title  of  two 
poems  by  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  addressed 
to  different  individuals.  The  first,  a 
lyric  of  two  five-lined  stanzas,  was 
written  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  and 
first  published  in  183 1.  It  was  ad- 
dressed to  Mrs.  Jane  Stanard,  the 
friend  and  confidante  of  his  boyhood, 
who  inspired  him,  in  his  own  words, 
with  "  The  one  idolatrous  and  purely 
ideal  love  of  my  passionate  boyhood." 
It  contains  the  well  known  lines 

To  the  glory  that  was  Greece, 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome. 

In  Spite  of  technical  defects  this  is 
one  of  his  most  exquisite  lyrics.  "  Its 
confusion  of  imagery,"  says  Sted- 
man,  "  is  wholly  forgotten  in  the 
delight  afforded  by  melody,  lyrical 
perfection,  sweet  and  classic  grace." 

The  other  and  later  poem  is  in 
blank  verse,  and  commemorates  the 
first  time  he  saw  the  poetess  Sarah 
Helen  Whitman,  a  lady  who  was  sub- 
sequently one  of  his  greatest  friends. 
This  was  when  he  was  on  his  way  to 
Boston  to  lecture.  Restless,  at  mid- 
night, he  wandered  from  his  hotel  at 
a  place  near  where  she  lived,  and  saw 
her  walking  in  a  garden. 

Helena,  in  the  second  part  of 
Goethe's  Faust,  an  avatar  of  Helen  of 
Troy,  summoned  from  the  shades  by 
Mephistopheles. 

The  Helena  of  the  Second  Part  of  Faust 
Is  a  pure  abstraction,  but  it  should  never  be 
forgotten  that  the  character  was  not  origin- 
ally intended  to  be  made  such.  A  long  series 
of  years  had  intervened  since  the  period 
when  the  youthful  Goethe  first  conceived 
the  idea  of  his  Faust  upon  the  basis  of  the 
popular  tradition  embodied  in  the  ancient 
puppet-play,  where  Faust  forces  Mephis- 
topheles to  procure  for  him  Greek  Helen, 
the  fairest  of  women.  As  late  as  the  year 
1800,  when  already  engaged  upon  the  re- 
modelling of  the  entire  First  Part,  he  ex- 
pressed his  regret  to  Schiller  that  he  must 
turn  Helena  into  a  mere  "mask  and  face" 
(Fratze).  The  Helena  of  the  Second  Part 
is  a  mere  allegory,  representing  Classicism 
as  opposed  to  Romanticism  (symbolized  in 
the  person  of  Faust),  and  giving  birth,  after 
her  union  with  him,  to  Euphorion,  who,  as 
Goethe  allowed  to  be  known,  was  to  typify 
the  brief  union  of  both  literary  tendencies 
in  Lord  Byron. — Saturday  Review. 


Helena 


191 


Helstone 


Helena,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
All's  Well  That  Ends  Well  (1598),  the 
only  daughter  of  a  doctor,  Gerard  de 
Narbon,  herself  so  skilled  in  medicine 
that  she  cured  the  King  of  France  of 
an  apparently  fatal  disorder.  In 
return  he  promised  her  the  hand  of 
any  one  among  his  courtiers.  She 
chose  Bertram,  Count  of  Roussilion, 
who  married  her  under  duress  and 
then  immediately  forsook  her.  She 
won  him  back  by  stratagem;  he  had 
pursued  a  maiden  named  Diana  with 
wanton  love;  Helena  substitutes  her- 
self for  Diana  at  the  assignation  and 
plays  her  part  so  well  that  later,  when 
she  convinces  Bertram  that  it  was 
herself  and  not  Diana  with  whom  he 
had  spent  the  night,  he  gladly  takes 
her  back.  This  stratagem  is  imitated 
by  Amanda  in  Colley  Gibber's  Love's 
Last  Shift. 

Helena  is  a  young  woman  seeking  a  man 
In  marriage.  The  ordinary  laws  of  courtship 
are  reversed,  the  habitual  feelings  are  vio- 
lated; yet  with  such  exquisite  address  this 
dangerous  subject  is  handled,  that  Helena's 
forwardness  loses  her  no  honor.  Delicacy 
dispenses  with  her  laws  in  her  favor. — 
Lamb. 

Helmer,  Nora,  heroine  of  Henrik 
Ibsen's  drama,  The  Doll's  House 
(1879),  is  a  sort  of  Scandinavian 
Frou-Frou  portrayed  with  a  greater 
depth  of  earnestness,  sympathy  and 
insight  than  her  French  predecessor. 
She  is  in  fact  a  type  of  nineteenth 
century  womanhood,  brought  up  in 
the  innocent  ignorance  which  was  the 
contemporary  ideal  and  quite  unable 
to  comprehend  and  contend  with  the 
sterner  realities  of  life.  Through  pure 
ignorance  she  commits  forgery  and 
contemplates  suicide.  She  is  saved 
by  her  husband,  who  takes  upon  him- 
self the  burden  of  guilt.  By  a  climisy 
expedient  he  also  is  saved. 

Heloise,  or  Eloise,  the  real  heroine 
of  one  of  the  most  famous  of  love 
romances,  the  mediaeval  episode  of 
Heloise  and  Abelard.  Peter  Abelard 
(1079-1142)  was  the  profoundest 
scholar,  the  most  skilful  dialectician, 
the  greatest  orator  of  his  day.  He 
fell  in  love  with  Heloise,  his  pupil, 
daughter  of  Ganon  Fulbert,  she  re- 
ciprocated  and   they  fell,   but   she 


refused  the  reparation  he  offered  her 
by  marriage.  Pope,  in  his  Epistle 
from  Eloisa  to  Abelard,  makes  this 
refusal  arise  from  an  abstract  predi- 
lection for  the  name  of  mistress  above 
that  of  wife;  it  was  really  due  to  dis- 
interested affection  which  would  not 
stand  in  the  way  of  the  high  ecclesi- 
astical preferment  which  seemed 
naturally  due  to  his  talents  and 
services. 

Heloise,  The  New,  a  name  which 
Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  gives  to  JuHe, 
the  heroine  of  his  romance,  La  Nou- 
velle  Heloise  (1760),  who  was  drawn 
from  an  actual  flame  of  his  own,  the 
Gountess  d'Houdetot.    See  Julie. 

Helstone,  Caroline,  in  Charlotte 
Bronte's  novel,  Shirley,  an  orphan 
brought  up  by  her  uncle,  the  rector. 
In  her  loyalty,  devotion  and  generos- 
ity she  is  faithfully  copied  from  Miss 
Bronte's  schoolfellow  and  warm  and 
steadfast  friend  through  life,  Ellen 
Nussey.  It  was  to  Miss  Nussey  that 
Charlotte  wrote,  "If  we  had  but  a 
cottage  and  a  competency  of  our 
own,  I  do  think  we  might  live  on  till 
death,  without  being  dependent  on 
any  third  person  for  happiness." 

Helstone,  Mr.,  in  Charlotte 
BrontS's  novel,  Shirley. 

In  the  seldom  recurring  holidays  Char- 
lotte made  sometimes  short  visits  with  those 
of  her  companions  whose  homes  were  within 
reach  of  school.  Here  she  made  acquaint- 
ance with  the  scenes  and  prominent  char- 
acters of  the  Luddite  period;  her  father 
materially  helped  to  fix  her  impressions,  for 
he  had  held  more  than  one  curacy  in  the 
very  neighborhood  which  she  describes  in 
Shirley.  He  was  present  in  some  of  the 
scenes,  an  active  participator  as  far  as  his 
position  permitted.  Sometimes  on  the 
defensive,  sometimes  aiding  the  sufferers, 
uniting  his  strength  and  influence  with  the 
Mr.  Helstone  of  Shirley.  Between  these 
two  men  there  seems  to  have  been  in  some 
respects  a  striking  aflSnity  of  character 
which  Charlotte  was  not  slow  to  perceive, 
and  she  blended  the  two  into  one,  though 
she  never  personally  beheld  the  original  of 
Mr.  Helstone,  except  once  when  she  was  ten 
years  old.  He  was  a  man  of  remarkable 
vigor  and  energy,  both  of  mind  and  will. 
An  absolute  disciplinarian,  he  was  some- 
times called  "Duke  Ecclesiastic,"  a  very 
Wellington  in  the  Church. 

Mr.  Bronte  used  to  delight  in  recalling 
the  days  he  spent  in  the  vicinity  of  this  man. 
Many  a  breakfast  hour  he  enlivened  by  his 
animated  relations  of  his  friend's  unflinching 
courage   and   dauntless   self-reliance, — ^and 


Henriette 


192 


Hereward 


how  the  ignorant  "and  prejudice  population 
around  misunderstood  and  misrepresented 
his  worthiest  deeds. — Reminiscences  of  Char" 
lotte  Bronte. 

Henriette,  In  Moll^re's  comedy, 
Les  Femmes  Savantes  (1672),  a 
bright  and  winning  giri  who  acts  as 
an  agreeable  foil  to  the  absurdities 
of  the  titular  "  Learned  Ladies  " — 
especially  her  mother  Philaminte  and 
her  sister  Armande.  She  shares  with 
her  father  the  opinion  that  household 
duties  and  not  science  and  philosophy 
constitute  woman's  true  field  of 
action,  and  might  therefore  be  ac- 
cepted as  the  pioneer  anti-suffragette 
in  modern  drama. 

Henriette  is  nature  Itself  and  straight- 
forward simplicity;  she  is  essentially 
womanly;  she  has  a  wholesome  charm  and  a 
feminine  grace.  Perhaps  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  Henriette  embodies  Moliere's 
ideal  of  the  French  girl,  just  as  Rosalind 
may  represent  Shakespeare's  ideal  of  the 
English  girl.  .  .  .  As  th  type  of 
maidenly  ignorance  Moliere  gives  us  Agnes, 
where  Shakespeare  presents  us  with  Mi- 
randa; and  as  the  representative  of  all  that 
is  most  attractively  feminine,  he  depicts 
Henriette  where  Shakespeare  has  imagined 
RosaUnd. — Brander  Matthews:  Moliere, 
p.  297. 

Henry  IV  (1366-1413),  the  first  of 
the  Lancastrian  kings,  appears  in  the 
two  Shakespearean  plays  that  bear 
his  name  and  also  in  Richard  JI, 
where  he  is  called  Bolingbroke  from 
the  town  in  which  he  was  born.  He 
was  Duke  of  Hereford  during  Rich- 
ard's reign. 

Henry  IV  is  the  same  BoHngbroke  who 
had  been  so  greatly  conceived  in  King  Rich- 
ard II;  only  he  is  no  longer  in  the  full  force 
of  his  manhood.  He  is  worn  by  care  and 
toil,  harassed  by  the  troubles  of  the  unquiet 
times,  yet  still  resolved  to  hold  firmly  what 
he  has  forcibly  attained.  There  is  a  pathetic 
power  in  the  figure  of  this  weary,  ambitious 
man,  who  can  take  no  rest  until  the  rest  of 
death  comes  to  him. — Edward  Dowden: 
Shakespeare  Primer. 

Henry  Vm,  last  of  the  Tudor 
kings  of  England,  is  the  hero  of  a 
historical  play  doubtfully  attributed 
to  Shakespeare. 

Henry,  if  we  judgeTilm  sternly,  !s  cruel 
and  self-indulgent;  but  Shakespeare  will 
hardly  allow  us  to  judge  Henry  sternly.  He 
is  a  lordly  figure,  with  a  full  abounding 
strength  of  nature,  a  self-confidence,  an 
ease  and  mastery  of  life,  a  power  of  eflfortlesa 
sway,  and  seems  bom  to  pass  on  in  triumph 
over  those  who  have  fallen  and  are  afflicted. 
— ^E.  Dowden:    Shakespeare  Primer. 


The  character  of  Henry  VIII  is  drawn 
with  great  truth  and  spirit.  It  is  like  a  very 
disagreeable  portrait,  sketched  by  the  hand 
of  a  master.  His  gross  appearance,  his 
blustering  demeanor,  his  vulgarity,  his 
arrogance,  his  sensuality,  his  cruelty,  his 
hypocrisy,  his  want  of  common  decency  and 
common  humanity  are  marked  in  strong 
lines.  His  traditional  peculiarities  of  ex- 
pression complete  the  reality  of  the  picture. 
His  authoritative  expletive  "Ha!"  with 
which  he  intimates  his  indignation  or  sur- 
prise, has  an  effect  like  the  first  startling 
sound  that  breaks  from  a  thundercloud.  He 
is  of  all  the  monarchs  in  our  history  the 
most  disgusting,  for  he  unites  in  himself  all 
the  vices  of  barbarism  and  refinement  ^with- 
out their  virtues. — Hazlitt. 

In  foreign  literature  the  most 
striking  portrait  of  Henry  VIII  ap- 
pears in  Calderon's  drama  La  Cisma 
de  Inglaterra  {The  English  Schism), 
which  narrates  the  monarch's  quarrel 
with  the  church  (for  which  Wolsey 
and  not  himself  is  made  responsible), 
and  more  especially  his  amour  with 
Anne  Bolejna,  an  astute,  alert,  and 
very  politic  lady. 

Hereward,  in  Walter  Scott's  ro- 
mance, Count  Robert  of  Paris  (183 1), 
a  Saxon  Crusader,  one  of  the  Varan- 
quan  guard  of  Alexius  Comnenus, 
Emperor  of  Greece.  He  is  vanquished 
by  the  titular  hero  in  single  combat 
with  battleaxes,  after  which  he  enlists 
under  Count  Robert's  banner,  and 
in  the  countess's  maid,  now  called 
Agatha,  discovers  his  Saxon  love 
Bertha. 

Hereward,  whom  Charles  Kingsley 
took  as  the  hero  of  his  novel,  Here- 
ward the  Wake  (1866),  was  the  son  of 
Leofric,  Earl  of  Chester,  and  Lady 
Godiva  (g.f.).  From  early  boyhood 
he  showed  such  insubordination  that 
his  father  obtained  his  banishment 
from  the  country.  After  many 
strange  adventures  he  married  a  noble 
maiden  named  Torf  rida  and  returned 
with  her  on  hearing  of  the  invasion  of 
England  by  the  Normans.  Finding 
most  of  his  family  slain  and  the 
ancestral  hall  in  possession  of  the 
invaders,  he  collected  a  band  of 
Saxons,  easily  rescued  his  patrimony 
and  then  took  refuge  on  the  Island 
of  Ely.  This  he  held  until  in  1072, 
he  was  betrayed  by  some  of  his  ad- 
herents, but  even  then  he  cut  his  way 
through  the  Norman  forces.    Finally 


Heriot 


193 


Hemanl 


he  made  peace  with  WiUiam  the 
Conqueror  through  the  influence  of 
the  Lady  Elfrida,  a  widow,  for  whose 
sake  he  repudiated  Torfrida.  But  he 
never  prospered  after  this  faithless- 
ness and  was  finally  slain  by  Norman 
besiegers  of  his  home. 

Heriot,  Blanche,  heroine  of  a  short 
story  in  Albert  Smith's  Pictures  of 
Life  (1841),  afterwards  turned  into 
a  melodrama  by  the  same  author 
under  the  title,  Blanche  Heriot,  or  the 
Chertsey  Curfew  (1842).  The  plot  is 
founded  upon  the  legend  connected 
with  the  Old  Chertsey  Church. 
Blanche  was  a  heroic  girl  during  the 
Wars  of  the  Roses  who  in  order  to 
gain  time  for  her  lover's  pardon  to 
arrive,  and  so  save  his  head  from 
"jrotling  on  the  Abbey  mead,"  clung 
to  the  clapper  of  the  great  bell  in  the 
belf rey  tower  and  so  prevented  it  from 
annoimcing  the  hour  set  for  the  execu- 
tion. The  theme  has  been  borrowed 
by  Rosa  Harthwicke  Thorpe  in  her 
ballad  Curfew  Shall  not  Ring  To-night^ 
who  changes  the  heroine's  name  to 
Bessie  and  the  time  of  action  to 
Cromwell's  day.  David  Belasco,  in 
The  Heart  of  Maryland,  uses  the 
same  expedient. 

Hermann,  farmer  hero  of  Goethe's 
pastoral  poem,  Hermann  and  Doro- 
thea.   See  Dorothea. 

Hermia,  an  Athenian  maiden, 
heroine  of  Shakespeare's  comedy,  A 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream  (1592). 
Egeus,  her  father,  had  promised  her 
in  marriage  to  Demetrius.  But  she, 
loving  Lysander,  eloped  with  him  and 
was  pursued  by  Demetrius.  He  in 
his  turn  was  followed  by  Helena,  who 
was  devotedly  in  love  with  him.  All 
four  fell  asleep  in  a  forest  and  dreamed 
the  dream  that  forms  the  basis  of  the 
comedy.  Through  the  help  of  a 
magic  herb  in  the  hands  of  Puck, 
Demetrius  awakes  in  love  with 
Helena  and  resigns  Hermia  to 
Lysander. 

Hermione,  heroine  of  the  first  part 
of  Shakespeare's  A  Winter's  Tale, 
daughter  of  the  Emperor  of  Russia 
and  consort  of  Leontes.  The  victim 
of  her  husband's  jealousy,  she  is 
believed  to  be  dead  for  fifteen  years 


and  is  restored  to  him  in  the  last 
act,  her  character  fully  vindicated. 

Hermione  Is,  I  suppose,  the  most  mag- 
nanimous and  noble  of  Shakespeare's 
women;  without  a  fault  she  suffers,  and  for 
sixteen  years,  as  if  for  the  greatest  fault. — 
F.  J.  FURNIVALL. 

The  character  of  Hermione  is  as  much 
distinguished  by  its  saint-like  resignation 
and  patient  forbearance,  as  that  of  Paulina 
Is  by  her  zealous  and  spirited  remonstrances 
against  the  injustice  done  to  the  queen,  and 
by  her  devoted  attachment  to  her  misfor- 
tunes. Hermione's  restoration  to  her  hus- 
band and  her  child,  after  her  long  separa- 
tion from  them,  is  as  affecting  in  itself  as  it 
Is  striking  in  the  representation. 

Hermit,  The,  the  otherwise  un- 
named hero  of  Thomas  Pamell's  poem 
so  entitled.  The  story  he  fotmd  in 
Howell's  Familiar  Letters  (Book  iv, 
Section  ix,  2),  who  in  his  turn  avowed 
obligation  to  "  Sir  P.  Herbert  in 
his  late  Conceptions."  The  hermit, 
anxious  to  renew  for  a  period  his 
relations  with  the  world,  starts  out 
from  his  ceU  and  is  joined  by  a  young 
stranger.  That  night  they  are  hos- 
pitably entertained  by  a  nobleman. 
The  youth  steals  his  golden  goblet. 
Next  night  they  are  reluctantly 
entertained  by  a  miser  to  whom  the 
youth  presents  the  goblet.  On  the 
third  day  the  youth  strangles  the 
infant  child  of  another  entertainer; 
on  the  fourth  he  drowns  the  guide 
who  had  led  the  wanderers  to  safety. 
When  the  hermit  started  to  curse 
the  youth  he  turned  into  a  radiant 
angel  who  explained  that  he  had 
stolen  the  goblet  to  teach  the  rich 
lord  not  to  trust  to  worldly  wealth; 
he  had  given  it  to  the  miser  to  show 
that  kindness  always  meets  a  reward; 
he  had  strangled  the  infant  because 
the  father  loved  it  better  than  he 
loved  God;  he  had  drowned  the  guide 
to  prevent  him  from  committing  a 
contemplated  murder. 

Hemani,  hero  of  a  tragedy  by 
Victor  Hugo  entitled  Hernani  or 
Castilian  Honor  (1830).  A  mysteri- 
ous bandit  and  revolutionary  leader, 
he  is  in  love  with  Dona  Sol,  the 
betrothed  of  Ruy  Gomez,  her  guard- 
ian, in  whose  house  she  lives.  She 
reciprocates  Hemani's  passion.  To 
complicate  matters  she  is  beloved  by 


Hero 


194 


Hiawatha 


the  king,  Charles  V.  Hemani  is 
discovered  at  night  in  Ruy  Gomez's 
house  planning  an  elopement.  King 
Charles,  who  had  smuggled  himself 
into  the  house  on  his  own  account, 
saves  the  bandit  by  claiming  him  as 
a  member  of  his  suite.  Later  Hemani 
returns  the  compliment  by  saving  the 
king  when  in  his  power.  Still  later 
Charles  pursues  the  outlaw  to  the 
gates  of  Ruy  Gomez's  castle.  The 
sacred  rites  of  hospitality  force  Gomez 
to  grant  sanctuary  to  the  fugitive. 
"  His  head  or  yours!"  shouts  Charles. 
"  Take  mine!  "  calmly  returns  the 
Duke.  Overcome  by  such  generosity 
Hemani  presents  Ruy  Gomez  with  a 
horn.  He  swears  to  forfeit  his  own 
life  whenever  Gomez  demands  it  by 
blowing  the  horn.  The  occasion 
comes  in  the  last  act,  at  his  own 
wedding  with  Dona  Sol,  which  is 
presided  over  by  the  magnanimous 
Charles,  now  an  emperor.  The  fatal 
horn  is  heard  in  the  midst  of  the 
festivities;  Ruy  is  implacable;  Her- 
nani  is  true  to  his  vow.  One  dose  of 
poison  suffices  for  bridegroom  and 
bride.  Ruy  Gomez  stabs  himself 
over  their  corpses. 

Hero,  in  Shakespeare's  Much  Ado 
About  Nothing  (1600),  daughter  of 
Leonato,  governor  of  Messina,  whose 
quiet  decorum  forms  an  excellent 
contrast  to  the  brilliant  insousciance 
of  her  cousin  Beatrice.  A  cruel  plot 
devised  by  the  malignant  Don  John 
separates  her  at  the  very  altar  from 
her  betrothed,  Don  Claudio,  but 
Beatrice,  with  Benedict's  help,  suc- 
ceeds in  estabHshing  the  truth. 

"When  they  are  both  on  the  scene  to- 
gether." says  Mrs.  Jameson,  "Hero  has 
little  to  say  for  herself;  Beatrice  asserts  the 
rule  of  a  master  spirit,  eclipses  her  by  her 
mental  superiority,  abashes  her  by  her  rail- 
lery, dictates  to  her,  answers  for  her.  But 
Hero,  added  to  her  grace  and  softness,  and 
all  the  interest  which  attaches  to  her  as  the 
sentimental  heroine  of  the  play,  possesses 
an  intellectual  beauty  all  her  own." 

The  supposed  death  and  subsequent  mar- 
riage of  Hero  were  suggested  by  the  22nd 
novella  of  Biondello's  collection,  whose 
scene  is  laid,  as  in  the  comedy,  at  Messina. 
Hero's  father  is  called  Leonato,  and  her 
lover's  friend  Don  Piero,  or  Pedro. 

The  mode  in  which  the  innocent  Hero 
before  the  altar  at  the  moment  of  the  wed- 


ding,  and  in  the  presence  of  her  family  and 
many  witnesses,  is  put  to  shame  by  a  most 
degrading  charge — false  indeed,  yet  clothed 
with  every  appearance  of  truth — is  a  grand 
piece  of  theatrical  effect  In  the  true  and 
justifiable  sense.  The  impression  would 
have  been  too  tragical  had  not  Shakespeare 
carefully  softened  it,  in  order  to  prepare  for 
a  fortunate  catastrophe. — Schlegel. 

Herrick,  Robert,  in  R.  L.  Steven- 
son's romance.  Ebbtide  (1894),  a  man 
who  has  failed  in  life  not  through  vice, 
but  weakness — a  fatal  incapacity  for 
fixed  aim  and  deliberate  action.  In 
his  beginnings  a  gentleman  and  a 
scholar,  a  graduate  of  Oxford,  he 
degenerates  into  a  beachcomber  and 
becomes  the  companion  of  outcasts 
who  man  a  stolen  ship.  He  tries 
suicide  and  fails  even  in  that.  "  I  am 
broken  crockery,"  he  cries;  "  I  am  a 
burst  drum;  the  whole  of  my  life 
has  gone  to  water;  I  have  nothing  left 
that  I  believe  in,  except  my  living 
horror  of  myself."  It  is  barely  pos- 
sible that  the  author  drew  some  hints 
for  this  character  from  his  cousin, 
Robert  A.  M.  Stevenson,  who  shared 
Herrick's  brilliant  incapacity  but  not 
his  guilt.  Will  H.  Low,  in  ^  Chronicle 
of  Friendship,^  quotes  a  letter  from 
Stevenson  which  contains  this  sen- 
tence: "  A  little  while  ago  Henley 
and  I  remarked  about  Bob  *  how 
strange  it  was  that  the  cleverest  man 
we  knew  was  starving.'  " 

Hester,  subject  of  Charles  Lamb's 
poem  of  that  name,  written  on  the 
death  of  Hester  Savory  (1777-1803), 
"  a  young  Quaker  you  may  have 
heard  me  speak  of  as  being  in  love 
with  for  some  years  while  I  lived  at 
Pentonville,  though  I  had  never 
spoken  to  her  in  my  life." — Lamb: 
Letter  to  Manning,  March,  1803. 
Some  attempts  have  been  made  to 

identify  her  with  the  Alice  W of 

Dream  Children,  but  Alice  was  fair 
and  Hester  Savory  dark  as  a  gipsy, 
as  may  be  seen  from  the  miniature 
reproduced  in  Lucas's  Life  of  Charles 
Lamb,  vol.  I,  p.  328. 

Hiawatha,  titular  hero  of  Long- 
fellow's epic  (1855),  who  according 
to  Indian  traditions  was  the  son  of 
Mudjekeewis  (the  west  wind)  and 
Wenonah.  He  wrestled  with  and 
conquered    Mondamin   (maize)    and 


High-Heels 


196 


Hogsflesh 


gave  it  to  be  the  food  of  man.  He 
subdued  Mishea  Nahma  the  sturgeon 
and  taught  man  how  to  extract  its 
oil  for  Hghting  and  cooking  purposes. 
He  introduced  the  arts  of  navigation, 
medicine,  and  picture  writing.  By 
his  marriage  to  Minnehaha  he  set  the 
example  of  monogamy.  After  her 
death  and  the  advent  of  the  white 
man  he  departed  for  the  kingdom  of 
Ponemah,  the  land  of  the  hereafter. 

High-Heels,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's 
Travels,  a  faction  or  party  in  Lilliput 
opposed  to  the  Low-Heels,  each  of 
whom  has  its  own  idea  as  to  whether 
high  or  low  heels  should  be  the  every- 
day fashion  for  shoes.  High-heels,  so 
they  averred,  were  most  loyal  to  the 
spirit  of  the  constitution,  nevertheless 
the  Emperor  of  Lilliput  appointed 
only  Low-Heels  to  office.  The  satire 
is  directed  against  the  High-church 
and  Low-church  factions  in  English 
religion  and  the  Whigs  and  Tories  in 
British  politics. 

Hilda,  in  Nathaniel  Hawthorne's 
romance,  The  Marble  Faun,  a  New 
England  maiden,  unspotted  of  the 
world,  studying  art^  in  Rome.  Her 
first  knowledge  of  sin  and  its  conse- 
quent suffering  comes  to  her  through 
the  guilt  of  others.  Accident  makes 
her  a  witness  to  Donabello's  murder 
of  the  monk  Antonio.  She  is  over- 
whelmed by  a  sense  of  the  wickedness 
thus  thrust  upon  her._  Her  under- 
standing of  the  old  painters  and  her 
skill  in  copying  them,  dependent  as 
they  are  upon  the  whiteness  of  her 
own  soul,  are  temporarily  suspended 
by  this  merely  vicarious  smirch.  She 
can  neither  keep  nor  betray  her  ter- 
rible secret,  and  in  this  dilemma 
seeks  the  secrecy  of  the  CathoHc 
confessional. 

Hilda's  Tower,  formerly  known  as 
the  Torre  della  Scimia,  is  still  pointed 
out  in  Rome.  Here  she  kept  a  legen- 
dary lamp  burning  before  the  shrine 
and  fed  her  doves  until  another's 
crime  drove  her  from  her  maiden 
refuge. 

In  the  biography  of  his  father 
Julian  Hawthorne  says  that  in  Hilda 
there  was  something  of  his  mother. 
He  denies  an  imputed  likeness  be- 


tween Hilda  and  a  certain  Miss 
Shepard  who  was  with  the  Haw- 
thomes  in  Italy .^  As  to  the  name,  the 
same  authority  in  Hawthorne  and  his 
Circle  tells  us  that  it  was  suggested 
by  the  Abbey  of  St.  Hilda  at  Whitby, 
on  the  Yorkshire  coast,  England. 

Hildegarde,  in  The  Initials,  by 
Baroness  Von  Tautphoeus.  See 
Rosenberg,  Hildegarde. 

Hoax,  Stanislaus,  in  Disraeli's 
novel,  Vivian  Grey,  a  practical  jester 
presumably  drawn  from  Theodore 
Hook.    See  Gay,  Lucien. 

Hobbididance,  the  "  prince  of 
dumbness,"  a  friend  referred  to  by 
Edgar  in  King  Lear,  Act  iv,  Sc.  I. 
Shadiespeare  evidently  found  the 
name  in  Harsnet's  Declaration  of 
Egregious   Popish  Impostures.      See 

MODU. 

Hobbinol,  in  William  Somerville's 
burlesque  pastoral,  Hobbinol,  or  the 
Rural  Gaines  (1740),  is  the  great 
man  of  his  village  in  the  Vale  of 
Eversham,  who  presides  over  the 
games  wherein  his  son.  Young  Hobbi- 
nol, and  Ganderetta,  a  near  relation, 
are  respectively  King  and  Queen  of 
the  May.    See  Hobinol. 

Hobinol  or  Hobbinol,  in  the  Shep- 
herd's Calendar  (1572),  a  pastoral 
poem  by  Edmund  Spenser,  a  fellow- 
swain  of  Colin  Clout,  who  sympa- 
thizes with  him  in  his  love  for  Rosa- 
lind (Eclogue  iv)  and  later  (Eclogue 
ix)  holds  a  dialogue  with  Diggon 
Davie  on  Popish  abuses.  As  Colin 
Clout  is  meant  for  Spenser,  so  Hobinol 
represents  his  classmate  and  life-long 
friend  Gabriel  Harvey  (1545-1630),  a 
physician  and  an  LL.D.,  a  respectable 
poet  and  one  of  the  most  learned  men 
of  his  day. 

Hogsflesh,  Mr.,  the  hero  of  a  farce, 
Mr.  H.,  by  Charles  Lamb,  which  was 
emphatically  damned  on  the  one 
night  of  its  performance,  December 
10,  1806. 

"  The  story,"  as  the  author  wrote 
to  Manning,  "  is  a  coxcomb  appearing 
at  Bath,  vastly  rich— all  the  ladies 
dying  for  him — all  bursting  to  know 
who  he  is;  but  he  goes  by  no  other 
name  than  Mr.  H."  At  length, 
**  after  much  vehement  admiration. 


Hohensteil-Schwangau 


196 


Holmes 


when  his  true  name  comes  out — Hogs- 
flesh — all  the  women  shun  him,  avoid 
him,  and  not  one  can  be  found  to 
change  their  name  for  him,"  until 
he  obtains  permission  from  the  king 
"  to  take  and  use  the  surname  and 
arms  of  Bacon,"  and  is  happily 
united  to  his  Melesinda. 

Curiously  enough  the  little  play 
was  frequently  brought  out  success- 
fully in  the  United  States. 

The  first  pope  who  changed  his  name  on 
assuming  the  pontificate — thereby  setting 
a  precedent  that  has  been  followed  by  all 
his  successors — was  named  Pietro  Osporca 
or  Peter  Hogsmouth.  Some  authorities 
attribute  the  change  to  the  apparent  arro- 

fance  of  assuming  to  call  himself  Peter  II. 
tut  the  general  impression  is  that  he  was 
glad  to  rid  himself  forever  from  all  associa- 
tion with  his  family  name  by  assuming  the 
title  of  Sergius  II. 

Hohensteil-Schwangau,  Prince,  in 

Robert  Browning's  poetical  soliloquy. 
Prince  Hohensteil  Schwangau,  the 
Savior  of  Society  (1872),  is  evidently 
painted  from  Napoleon  III. 

With  plausible  and  ingenious  cas- 
uistry the  Prince  passes  in  review  the 
leading  events  of  his  own  life.  He 
acknowledges  that  they  conform  to 
no  ideal  standard  and  justify  no 
plaudits  which  hero-worshipping  his- 
torians might  bestow  upon  them, 
yet  he  claims  that  in  this  world  any 
Utopian  scheme  of  government  would 
be  worse  than  useless,  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  a  ruler_  to  adjust  himself  to 
existing  conditions,  and  assist  his 
subjects  to  live  the  life  into  which 
they  were  bom;  and  that  his  own 
policy,  vacillating  as  it  might  seem 
to  the  ingenuous,  was  dictated 
throughout  by  the  higher  law  of 
public  expediency. 

Holdfast,  Aminadal,  in  Mrs.  Cent- 
livre's  comedy,  A  Bold  Stroke  for  a 
Wife  (17 10),  a  friend  of  Simon  Pure. 

Holgrave,  Mr.,  in  Hawthorne's 
romance.  The  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables,  assumed  name  of  a  daguerro- 
typist  who  persuades  Hepzibah  Pyn- 
cheon  to  rent  him  a  room  in  one  of 
the  "  seven  "  gables.  HiS  real  name 
is  Maule,  his  family  being  hereditary 
enemies  of  the  Pyncheons. 

HoUingsworth,  in  Hawthorne's  The 
Blithedale  Romance  (i  852),  the  leading 


spirit  in  the  Blithedale  community, 
a  strong  man  physically  and  mentally 
but  narrowed  down  to  a  single  idea: 
**  He  had  taught  his  benevolence 
to  pour  its  warm  tide  exclusively 
through  one  channel,  so  that  there 
was  nothing  to  spare  for  other  great 
manifestations  of  love  to  man,  nor 
scarcely  for  the  nutriment  of  individ- 
ual attachments  unless  they  could 
minister,  in  some  way,  to  the  terrible 
egotism  which  he  mistook  for  an 
angel  of  God."  Both  the  gentle  Pris- 
cilla  and  the  passionate  Zenobra  are  in 
love  with  him. 

Holmes,  Sherlock,  the  amateur 
detective  in  novels  and  stories  by  Sir 
Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  avowedly  imi- 
tated from  the  M.  Dupin  {q.v.)  of 
Edgar  Allan  Poe.  He  first  appears 
in  A  Study  in  Scarlet  (1887),  is  a  lead- 
ing character  in  The  Sign  of  the  Four 
(1889),  The  Adventures  of  Sherlock 
Holmes  (1891),  and  The  Hound  of  the 
Baskervilles  (1902),  is  apparently 
killed  off  at  the  close  of  The  Memoirs 
of  Sherlock  Holmes  (1904),  but  is 
somewhat  awkwardly  and  uncon- 
vincingly  resuscitated  (for  commer- 
cial reasons,  it  is  suspected,  quite  as 
much  as  for  literary)  in  The  Return 
of  Sherlock  Holmes  (1904). 

A  slave  to  cocaine,  eccentric  and 
brusque  in  manner,  Holmes  never- 
theless displays  rare  detective  skill 
and  unravels  the  most  intricate  crimi- 
nal snarls.  His  forte  is  d  posteriori 
reasoning  which  enables  him  so  to 
group  apparently  unimportant  effects 
as  to  discover  the  most  remote  and 
apparently  disconnected  causes. 

The  death  of  the  original  of  Sherlock 
Holmes  early  this  month  at  his  home  near 
Edinburgh  leads  the  Dial  to  remind  its 
readers  that  it  is  not  far  from  a  score  of 
years  since  Dr.  Joseph  Bell,  an  instructor 
of  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  unwittingly 
gave  him  more  than  the  formal  lessons 
bargained  for,  by  supplying  him  with  the 
germinal  idea  from  which  grew  the  detec- 
tive stories  that  made  his  reputation.  Dr. 
Bell,  who  was  bom  in  1837.  early  showed 
such  skill  in  the  application  of  inductive 
methods  to  the  practice  of  his  profession 
that,  long  before  the  creation  01  Sherlock 
Holmes,  he  was  chosen  assistant  to  Dr. 
Littlewood,  official  adviser  to  the  crown  in 
cases  of  medical  jurisprudence.  It  was  his 
application  of  the  same  methods  in  a  half- 
playful  vein  to  the  affairs  of  everyday  life 


Holofemes 


197 


Homespun 


that  caught  the  attention  and  stimulated 
the  imagination  of  the  youthful  Doyle, 
although  Dr.  Bell  himself  is  said  to  have 
deprecated  the  notoriety  thus  thrust  upon 
him  as  the  alleged  model  of  Holmes,  and  to 
have  maintained  that  his  use  of  the  faculty 
of  observation  was  nothing  more  than  could 
be  learned  from  any  good  manual  of  general 
medical  practice. — N.  Y.  Nation. 

Holofemes,  In  Shakespeare's  com- 
edy, Love's  Labor's  Lost  (1594).  a 
pedantic  schoolmaster  in  whom  are 
ridiciiled  the  affectations-and  pompos- 
ity of  contemporary  pedagogues,  and 
especially  those  who  adopted  the 
preciosity  of  Lyly's  Euphues.  Shake- 
speare probably  took  the  name, 
directly  or  indirectly,  from  Rabelais 
Gargantua,  the  hero  of  which  was 
instructed  in  Paris  by  a  pedant  named 
Holofeme.  Much  ingenuity  has 
been  wasted  in  identifying  the  char- 
acter with  John  Florio  (d.  1625),  an 
Italian  philologist  and  lexicographer 
settled  in  London,  who  might  have 
provoked  Shakespeare's  spleen  by 
attacking  all  English  dramas  as 
*'  neither  right  comedies  nor  right 
tragedies,  but  perverted  histories 
without  decorum."  It  has  been 
pointed  out  that  Holofemes  is  an 
imperfect  anagram  of  Johannes  Florio, 
or  rather  a  perfect  anagram  of  Hnes 
Florio,  but  the  imperfection  is  a  little 
too  glaring. 

Holt,  Felix,  hero  of  George  Eliot's 
novel,  Felix  Holt  the  Radical,  an 
ardent  but  level-headed  champion  of 
the  workingman  believed  to  be  drawn 
from  Gerald  Massey. 

No  doubt,  Felix  is  an  honourable  man, 
for  he  refuses  to  live  upon  a  quack  medicine 
or  to  look  leniently  at  bribery  when  it  is  on 
his  own  side.  But  there  is  a  painful  excess 
of  sound  judgment  about  him.  He  gets 
Into  prison,  not  for  leading  a  mob,  but  for 
trying  to  divert  them  from  plunder  by 
actions  which  are  misunderstood.  He  is 
very  inferior  to  Alton  Locke,  who  gets  into 
prison  for  a  similar  performance.     The  im- 

Eetuosity  and  vehemence  only  comes  out  in 
is  rudeness  to  Esther  and  plain  speaking 
to  her  adopted  father;  and  in  trying  to 
make  him  an  ideal  of  wisdom,  George  Eliot 
only  succeeds  in  making  him  unfit  for  bis 
part. — Leslie  Stephen:    George  Eliot. 

Holy  Bottle  (Ft.  Dive  Bouteille), 
in  Rabelais's  satiric  romance  Panta^ 
gruel  (1545),  an  oracle  whose  quest 
occupies  much  of  the  time  of  Panta- 
gruel  and  his  friend  Panurge.    After 


seeking  it  vainly  in  many  lands,  in 
order  to  question  it  as  to  the  advisa- 
bility of  Panurge's  marriage,  they 
finally  locate  it  in  the  island  of 
Lanterns.  Here  the  Bottle  is  kept  in 
an  alabaster  fount  in  a  great  temple. 
The  attendant  priestess  throws  some- 
thing into  the  waters  which  begins 
to  bubble,  and  from  out  the  mouth 
of  the  oracular  bottle  proceeds  the 
single  word  Trine!  (Drink!)  The 
advice  is  taken  and  the  story  ends 
in  an  orgy.  An  order  of  the  Dive 
Bouteille  was  instituted  in  France  in 
the  sixteenth  century  avowedly  to 
carry  out  the  philosophy  of  Pan- 
tagruelism. 

Homburg,  Prince  of,  hero  and  title 
of  a  romantic  drama  by  Heinrich  von 
Kleist. 

In  a  battle  fought  by  Frederick 
William,  Elector  of  Brandenburg, 
against  the  Swedes  the  Prince,  dis- 
obeying orders  at  a  critical  moment, 
rushes  in  and  turns  defeat  into  vic- 
tory. Nevertheless  he  is  arrested  for 
disobedience  and  condemned  to  death. 
Nathalie,  the  Elector's  niece  and 
adopted  daughter,  who  is  secretly 
betrothed  to  the  Prince  pleads  for 
pardon  which  Frederick  agrees  to 
grant  if  the  culprit  will  sign  a  state- 
ment that  his  sentence  is  unjust.  The 
Prince  recognizes  that  he  cannot  do 
this.  Even  his  own  officers  clamoring 
for  his  release  cannot  sway  his  pur- 
pose. The  Elector,  however,  has  only 
been  trying  him,  the  Prince  is  par- 
doned and  formally  betrothed  to 
Nathalie.  A  similar  theme  is  treated 
by  Schiller  in  his  Fight  vnth  the 
Dragon. 

Homespun,  Cecily,  in  George  Col- 
man,  Jr.'s  comedy,  The  Heir  at  Law 
(1797),  an  innocent  little  country  girl 
betrothed  to  Dick  Dowlas.  Like 
her  brother  Zekiel  she  was  the  proto- 
type of  a  whole  line  of  beings  long 
popular  upon  the  British  stage— ;-the 
original  of  the  simple  rustic  maiden 
whose  wardrobe  was  contained  within 
a  cotton  pocket  handkerchief,  who 
trusted  and  believed  in  everybody 
and  wept  with  everybody  and  was  as 
innocent  of  London  ways  as  one  of 
her  own  lambs. 


Homespun 


198 


Hope 


Homesptm,  Zekiel,  in  George  Col- 
man,  Jr.'s  comedy,  The  Heir  at  Law 
(1797),  an  honest,  warm-hearted, 
simple-minded  rustic,  the  prototype 
of  a  long  line  of  similar  characters 
upon  the  English  stage.  Colman  was 
one  of  the  first  who  awoke  sympathy 
for  the  woes  of  the  lowly  bom.  He 
may  be  said  to  have  created  the 
ebulient  and  kindly  peasant,  ever 
lugging  out  his  small  stock  of  money, 
ever  eager  to  bestow  his  last  shilling 
on  any  teller  of  a  pitiful  tale,  ever 
spouting  sentiment  and  morality,  as 
ready  with  his  fists  as  with  his  tongue, 
and  invariably  expressing  joy  by 
stamping  his  hob-nailed  boots  and 
singing  "  Ri  ti  tol  di  iddity,  tol  de 
iddity,  tol  de  iddity."  This  noble 
creature,  after  being  the  idol  of  pit 
and  gallery  for  over  half  a  century, 
was  finally  slain  in  the  burlesques  of 
H.  J.  Byron. 

Homunculus,  in  Goethe's  Faust, 
Part  II,  is  a  small  human  being  whom 
Wagner,  the  Famulus  of  Faust,  dis- 
carding all  natural  methods  of  genera- 
tion, has  succeeded  in  fashioning  by 
artificial  means. 

The  meaning  of  Homunculus  may  be 
better  grasped  if  we  remember  that  Wagner 
stands  for  the  letter  as  Faust  for  the  spirit. 
The  letter  without  the  spirit  killeth;  the 
spirit  without  the  letter  could  make  no 
revelation  of  itself.  Letter  and  spirit  are 
alike  necessary,  but  only  in  harmonious 
union.  Faust  has  recourse  to  the  Mothers — 
to  the  Infinite,  the  Absolute  the  realm  of  the 
Idea.  Wagner  works  in  the  world  of  natural 
forces,  concerns  himself  with  methods  of 
expression.  Grammar,  rhetoric,  history — 
all  these  human  arts  are  typified  by  Homun- 
culus. As  the  Earth-Spirit  prepares  the 
garment  of  Life  which  the  Deity  wears,  so 
Wagner  prepares  the  garment  of  expression 
with  which  the  idea  must  clothe  itself. 

Honeyman,  Miss,  in  Thackeray's 
novel,  The  Newcomes,  aunt  to  Clive 
Newcome  and  sister  of  Rev.  Charles 
Honeyman,  a  little,  brisk  old  lady, 
cheerful,  frugal,  honest,  laborious, 
charitable,  who  lets  out  lodgings  in 
Steyne  Gardens  and  whose  superior 
manners  and  prosperity  win  her  from 
the  neighboring  tradespeople  the  title 
of  Duchess. 

Honeythunder,  Mr.  Luke,  in  Dick- 
ens's Edwin  Drood,  chairman  of  the 
Convened  Composite  Committee  of 


Central  and  District  Philanthropists, 
a  large  man,  with  a  tremendous  voice, 
and  an  appearance  of  being  constantly 
engaged  in  crowding  everybody  to  the 
wall. 

Honeywood,  hero  of  Goldsmith's 
comedy.  The  Good-natured  Man 
(1767),  a  young  man  of  good  family 
and  ample  fortune,  whose  aim  in  life 
is  to  be  generally  beloved,  and  whose 
motto  is  '*  universal  benevolence." 
He  can  neither  refuse  nor  contradict; 
he  gives  away  with  lavish  liberality 
to  worthy  and  im worthy  aHke;  he 
suffers  his  servants  to  plunder  him; 
he  tries  to  fall  in  with  the  humor  of 
every  one  and  to  agree  with  every 
one.  Goldsmith  himself  is  the  un- 
doubted original  of  this  character. 
At  last  Honeywood  is  reformed 
through  the  influence  of  his  uncle,  Sir 
William,  and  of  Miss  Richland, 
whom  he  married,  and  in  the  last  act 
he  confesses  that  his  system  of  uni- 
versal benevolence  had  been  a  fatal 
mistake.  "  Though  inclined  to  the 
right,  I  had  not  courage  to  condemn 
the  wrong;  my  charity  was  but  in- 
justice, my  benevolence  but  weak- 
ness, and  my  friendship  but  credu- 
lity." 

Honeywood,  Sir  William,  in  the 
same  comedy,  the  uncle  of  the  above, 
a  generous  and  high-minded  gentle- 
man, whose  benevolence,  however,  is 
limited  by  the  demands  of  good  sense, 
and  who  strives  to  bring  his  nephew 
within  the  same  judicious  bounds. 

Honoria,  subject  of  Dryden's  poem, 
Theodore  and  Honoria,  imitated  from 
a  story  in  Boccaccio's  Decameron, 
8th  day.  The  mounted  spectre  of  a 
knight  pursues  with  dogs  the  ghostly 
form  of  the  woman  who  in  life  had 
scornfully  repelled  his  love.  In 
Boccaccio's  story  the  names  are 
given  as  Guido  Cavalcante  and  Nos- 
talgia degli  Onesti. 

Hope,  Evelyn,  heroine  of  a  poem 
by  Browning  in  Men  and  Women 
(1855).  Evelyn,  a  maid  of  sixteen, 
is  dead.  He  who  had  loved  her,  a 
man  "  thrice  as  old,"  contemplating 
her  as  she  lies  in  the  beauty  of  death 
and  asking  himself  whether  his  love 
was  all  in  vain,  replies  that  love  is 


Horatio 


199 


Howe 


eternal,  that  there  never  will  be  one 
lost  good,  and  that  he  will  claim  her 
in  the  life  to  come  or  in  worlds  not 
yet  created,  and  be  more  worthy  of 
her  then  than  now. 

Horatio,  in  Shakespeare's  Hamlet, 
the  faithful  friend  and  counsellor  of 
the  titular  hero. 

Horatio  is  the  only  complete  man  in  the 
play — solid,  well-knit  and  true;  a  noble, 
quiet  nature  with  that  highest  of  all  quali- 
ties, judgment,  always  sane  and  prompt, 
who  never  drags  his  anchors  for  any  wind 
of  opinion  or  fortune,  but  grips  all  the  closer 
to  the  reality  of  things.  He  seems  one  of 
those  calm,  undemonstrative  men  whom  we 
love  and  admire  without  asking  to  know 
why,  crediting  them  with  the  capacity  for 
great  things,  without  any  test  of  actual 
achievement,  because  we  feel  that  their 
manhood  is  a  constant  quality,  and  no  mere 
accident  of  circumstance  and  opportunity. 
— J.  R.  Lowell:  Literary  Essays,  Shake- 
speare Once  More. 

Homer,  Gilpin,  a  goblin  page  of 
somewhat  baffling  characteristics,  in- 
troduced by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  his 
Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  (1805). 

Lord  Cranstoun's  page  is  somewhat  un- 
earthly. It  is  a  little  misshapen  dwarf 
whom  he  found  one  day  when  he  was  hunt- 
ing in  a  solitary  glen  and  took  home  with 
him.  It  never  speaks  except  now  and  then 
to  cry  "Lost!  lost!  lost!"  and  is  on  the 
whole  a  hateful,  malicious  little  urchin  with 
no  one  good  quality  but  his  unaccountable 
fidelity  and  attachment  to  his  master. — 
Francis  Jeffrey:  Essays  from  the  Edin- 
burgh Review — Walter  Scott. 

Hortense,  in  Dickens's  Bleak 
House,  the  French  maid  to  Lady 
Dedlock.  She  looks  "  like  a  very 
neat  she- wolf  imperfectly  tamed." 
She  imperfectly  guesses  Lady  Ded- 
lock's  secret,  shoots  Mr.  Tulkinghora, 
and  disappears,  still  defiant,  in  the 
custody  of  Mr.  Inspector  Bucket. 

Hosier,  Admiral,  the  subject  of 
Richard  Glover's  ballad.  Admiral 
Hosier's  Ghost  (1739),  was  a  British 
officer  who  in  command  of  20  ships 
and  3000  men  was  sent  to  the  Spanish 
West  Indies  with  orders  to  blockade 
but  not  to  attack.  His  men  were 
decimated  by  disease;  he  himself  died 
of  a  broken  heart  at  this  enforced 
inaction.  The  poem  tells  how,  after 
Vernon's  victory,  the  ghosts  of  Hosier 
and  his  men  arose  "  all  in  dreary 
hammocks  shrouded,  which  for  wind- 


ing sheets  they  wore  "  and  lamented 
their  lost  opportunities. 

Hotspur,  a  popular  nickname  given 
to  Harry  Percy  (1364- 1403),  the  son 
of  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  on 
account  of  his  fiery  temper.  Shake- 
speare adopts  the  pseudonym  in  the 
two  parts  of  Henry  IV. 

Hotspur,  who  to  bring  him  into  contrast 
with  the  Prince  is  made  much  younger  than 
the  Harry  Percy  of  history,  is  as  ardent  in 
the  pursuit  of  glory  as  the  Prince  seems  to  be 
indifferent  to  it.  To  his  hot  temper  and 
quick  sense  of  personal  honor,  small  matters 
are  great;  he  does  not  see  things  in  their 
true  poportions;  he  lacks  self-control,  he 
has  no  easiness  of  nature.  Yet  he  is  gallant, 
chivalrous,  not  devoid  of  generosity  nor  of 
quick  affections,  though  never  in  a  high 
sense  disinterested. — Dowden:  Shakespeare 
Primer. 

Houyhnhnms,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's 
Travels,  a  race  of  horses  endowed 
with  reason  and  bearing  rule  over  the 
degraded  yahoos — ^the  latter  being 
caricatures  of  humanity  as  the  former 
are  sublimations  of  the  animal  crea- 
tion. The  name  is  obviously  onoma- 
tapoetic  and  is  meant  to  suggest  the 
neighing  of  a  horse. 

Nay,  would  kind  Jove  my  organs  so  dispose 
To  hymn  harmonious  Houyhnhnms  through 

the  nose, 
I'd  call  thee  Houyhnhnm,  that  high-sounding 

name; 
Thy  children's  noses  all  should  twang  the 

same. 

Pope. 

Howe,  Miss,  in  Richardson's  Clar- 
issa Harlowe  (1751),  the  friend  and 
correspondent  of  the  heroine. 

Miss  Howe  is  an  admirably  sketched 
character,  drawn  in  strong  contrast  to  that 
of  Clarissa,  yet  worthy  of  being  her  friend — 
with  more  of  worldly  perspicacity,  though 
less  of  abstracted  principle;  and  who,  when 
they  argue  upon  points  of  doubt  and  deli- 
cacy, is  often  able,  by  going  directly  to  the 
question  at  issue,  to  start  the  game,  while 
her  more  gifted  correspondent  does  but 
beat  the  bush.  Her  high  spirit  and  disinter- 
ested devotion  for  her  friend,  acknowledg- 
ing, as  she  does  on  all  occasions,  her  own 
inferiority,  show  her  in  a  noble  point  of 
view;  and  though  we  are  afraid  she  must 
have  given  honest  Hickman  (notwithstand- 
ing her  resolution  to  the  contrary)  rather 
an  uneasy  time  of  it  after  marriage,  yet  it 
is  impossible  not  to  think  that  she  was  a 

§rize    worth    suffering    for. — SiR  Walter 
COTT. 

Miss  Howe,  who  is  called  a  young  lady 
of  sense  and  honor,  is  not  only  extremely 
silly,  but  a  more  vicious  character  than 
Sally   Martin,  whose  crimes  are  owing  at 


Hubbard 


200 


Humphrey 


first  to  seduction  and  afterwards  to  neces- 
sity; while  this  virtuous  damsel  without  any 
reason  insults  her  mother  at  home  and  ridi- 
cules her  abroad;  abuses  the  man  she  mar- 
ries and  is  impertinent  and  impudent  with 
great  applause. — Lady  M.  W.  Montagu: 
Letter  to  the  Countess  of  Bute,  March  i, 
1753. 

Hubbard,  Bartley,  the  chief  char- 
acter in  Howells'  novel,  A  Modern 
Instance  (1882). 

A  rascal  of  the  most  frequent  American 
pattern.  He  is  neither  cruel  nor  a  slave  of 
his  passions,  nor  has  he  any  desire  to  sacri- 
fice others  to  himself.  On  the  contrary,  he 
is  very  good-natured  and  amiable,  and  likes 
to  see  everybody  happy  about  him.  But 
of  honor  or  principle  he  has  no  idea  what- 
ever. In  fact,  for  the  old-fashioned  notion 
of  principle  he  has  substituted  a  new  idea — 
that  of  the  primary  importance  of  "smart- 
ness"— i.e.,  of  that  quality  which  enables  a 
man  to  get  ahead  of  his  fellow  by  short  cuts, 
dodges,  tricks,  devices  of  all  kinds  which 
Just  fall  short  of  crime. — N.  Y.  Nation. 

Huddibras,  Sir,  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene  (11,  ii),  the  suitor  of  Perissa 
(who  typifies  extravagance),  and  him- 
self described  as  a  man  "  more  huge 
in  strength  than  wise  in  works." 

Hudibras,  Sir,  titular  hero  of  a 
burlesque  epic  in  octosyllabic  verse 
by  Samuel  Butler,  published  in  three 
parts  (1663,  1664,  1678).  The  name 
is  derived  from  the  Sir  Huddibras 
(q.v.)  of  Spenser;  the  setting  is  imi- 
tated from  Don  Quixote,  though  the 
spirit  is  quite  different.  Cervantes 
smiled  Spain's  chivalry  away  because 
he  deemed  it  obsolete;  Butler  would 
dismiss  Puritanism  with  a  kick  be- 
cause he  deemed  it  a  still  dangerous 
innovation,  scotched  but  not  killed. 
Hudibras  is  a  true-blue  Presbyterian, 
ignorant  and  conceited,  but  a  pedan- 
tic pretender  to  learning,  who  starts 
out  on  a  crusade  against  the  follies 
and  amusements  of  the  time,  bent  on 
reforming  them  by  "  apostolic  blows 
and  knocks."  His  attendant  squire 
is  Ralpho,  an  Independent  and  an 
evident  recrudescence  of  Sancho 
Panza.  Hudibras  is  variously  said 
to  be  drawn  from  Sir  Samuel  Luke  or 
Sir  Henry  Rosewell.  He  is  repre- 
sented as  humpbacked  and  pot- 
bellied. His  orange-tawny  beard  is 
long  and  unkempt  because  he  had 
vowed  not  to  trim  it  until  the  mon- 
archy was  overthrown.     His  horse, 


blind  on  one  side  and  wall-eyed  on  the 
other,  is  reminiscent  of  Don  Quixote's 
Rosinante  and  Gargantua's  mare. 

Hudson,  Sir  Geofifrey,  a  famous 
dwarf  (1678-1698),  court  jester  to 
Henrietta  Maria,  the  Queen  of  Charles 
II  of  England,  is  introduced  into 
Scott's  novel,  Peveril  of  the  Peak.  He 
tells  Julian  Peveril  the  true  story  of 
how  the  late  queen  had  caused  him  to 
be  enclosed  in  a  pie  which  was  served 
up  at  a  royal  banquet. 

Humorous  Lieutenant,  The,  chief 
comic  character  (otherwise  unnamed) 
in  a  tragi-comedy  of  that  title  by 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  (16 16).  A 
sort  of  privileged  jester  at  the  Court 
of  Antigonus,  King  of  Macedon,  he 
accidentally  drinks  up  a  love-potion 
prepared  by  the  royal  order  for  a 
recalcitrant  maiden  named  Celia. 
Thereupon  the  Lieutenant  becomes 
violently  enamored  of  the  king  and 
exhibits  his  passion  in  various  absurd 
ways. 

Humphrey,  Master,  in  Dickens's 
Old  Curiosity  Shop,  a  deformed,  mis- 
shapen old  clockmaker  who  according 
to  the  original  scheme  was  to  have 
been  the  narrator  of  the  story,  as  may 
be  gathered  from  the  earlier  chapters 
which  appeared  (1840)  as  part  of  a 
serial.  Master  Humphrey's  Clock. 
Sam  Weller  and  his  father  were  re- 
suscitated from  the  Pickwick  Papers 
to  assist  the  sale,  but  only  two  tales 
were  included  in  the  publication, 
(completed  in  1841)  and  these  (Bar- 
naby  Rudge  and  The  Old  Curiosity 
Shop)  were  afterwards  republished 
separately.  From  that  time,  says 
Dickens,  Master  Humphrey's  Clock, 
"as  originally  constructed,  becameone 
of  the  lost  books  of  the  earth,  which, 
we  all  know,  are  far  more  precious 
than  any  that  can  be  read  for  love  or 
money."  The  original  "  clock  "  is 
said  to  be  in  existence. 

The  town  of  Barnard  Castle  is  most  pic- 
turesque, with  a  ruined  castle  of  the  Baliols. 
Dickens  in  early  life  used  frequently  to  come 
down  and  stay  there  with  some  young  artist 
friends  of  his.  The  idea  of  Humphrey's 
Clock  first  sprang  from  Humphrey,  the 
watchmaker  in  the  town,  and  the  picture 
in  the  beginning  of  the  book  is  of  the  clock 
over  the  door  of  his  shop. — Augustus  J.  C. 
Hare,  The  Story  of  My  Life,  vol.  ii,  p.  27s. 


Hunter 


201 


lanthe 


Hunter,    Mr.   and   Mrs.   Leo,    in 

Dickens's  Pickwick  Papers,  a  couple 
who,  as  their  name  implies,  are^  in- 
defatigable hunters  of  society  lions 
so  as  to  exhibit  them  in  their  own 
parlors. 

Hut,  Judah  Ben,  hero  of  a  historical 
romance,  Ben  Hur,  a  Tale  of  the 
Christ,  by  Gen.  Lew  Wallace.  The 
head  of  a  wealthy  and  noble  family 
in  Jerusalem,  he  is  wrongly  accused 
by  his  false  friend  Messala  of  at- 
tempted murder  on  the  Roman  gov- 
ernor, is  stripped  of  all  his  possessions 
and  condemned  to  the  galleys.  His 
galley  is  attacked  and  sunk  by  rob- 
bers; his  bravery  in  its  defence  leads 
to  his  being  adopted  by  the  tribune 


Arrius;  he  defeats  Messala  in  a 
famous  chariot  race;  after  many  vicis- 
situdes he,  his  mother  and  sister  are 
healed  of  leprosy  by  the  Messiah.  He 
witnesses  the  baptism,  miracles,  trial 
and  crucifixion  of  Christ  and  turns 
Christian  himself. 

Hurlothrumbo,  hero  of  a  dramatic 
extravaganza  (1730)  by  the  English 
actor-dramatist,  Samuel  Johnson, 
which  had  a  great  contemporary 
vogue. 

Consider,  then,  before,  like  Hurlo-Thrumbo, 
You  aim  your  club  at  any  creed  on  earth. 
That,  by  the  simple  accident  of  birth. 

You  might  have  been  high-priest  to  Mumbo- 
Jumbo.  Thomas  Hood. 

Hyde,  Mr.    See  Dr.  Jekyll. 


lachimo,  in  Shakespeare's  Cymbe- 
line  (1605),  a  friend  of  Posthumus, 
who  accepts  the  latter's  wager  that 
he  cannot  seduce  Imogen  from  her 
wifely  fidelity  to  Posthumus.  When 
he  finds  her  incorruptible,  lachimo 
manages  to  get  smuggled  into  her 
chamber  and  as  she  sleeps  he  takes  a 
mental  inventory  of  its  contents, 
notes  certain  marks  on  her  body,  and 
possesses  himself  of  her  bracelet.  The 
evidence  convinces  Posthumus;  he 
repudiates  his  wife  and  hands  lach- 
imo the  stakes,  his  own  diamond  ring. 
Later,  Imogen  disguised  as  a  boy 
page,  is  brought  before  King  Cymbe- 
line  and,  being  bid  to  demand  a  favor, 
asks  that  lachimo  shall  reveal  how  he 
obtained  the  diamond  ring  upon  his 
finger,  whereupon  the  whole  truth 
comes  out. 

lago,  in  Shakespeare's  Othello,  the 
"  ancient,"  or  ensign,  to  the  Moor, 
his  secret  enemy  and  his  pretended 
friend.  He  hates  Cassio  for  having 
been  promoted  to  an  office  over  his 
own  head ;  he  hates  Othello  for  having 
promoted  him;  he  believes  or  pre- 
tends to  believe  that  the  latter  has 
been  intimate  with  his  wife,  Emilia; 
he  despises  Desdemona's  simplicity, 
and  he  sets  to  work  at  the  plot  that 
ruins  Cassio,  kills  Desdemona,  and 
makes  a  murderer  and  suicide  of 
Othello. 


Simple  minded  critics  have  been  of 
opinion  that  Shakespeare  constructed  lago 
on  the  lines  of  the  historic  Richard  III — 
that  is  to  say  found  him  in  literature,  in 
the  pages  of  a  chronicler.  Believe  me, 
Shakespeare  met  lago  in  his  own  life,  saw 
portions  and  aspects  of  him  on  every  hand 
throughout  his  manhood,  encountered  him 
piecemeal  as  it  were  on  his  daily  path,  till 
one  fine  day  when  he  thoroughly  felt  and 
understood  what  malignant  cleverness  and 
baseness  can  effect,  he  melted  down  all  these 
fragments,  and  out  of  them  cast  this  figure. 
— Coleridge. 

There  is  no  character  in  Shakespeare's 
plays  so  full  of  serpentine  power  and  serpen- 
tine poison  as  lago.  The  lachimo  of  Cytn- 
beline  is  a  faint  sketch  in  water  colors  of  the 
absolute  villain  lago.  He  is  envious  of 
Cassio,  and  suspects  that  the  Moor  may 
have  wronged  his  honor;  but  his  malignancy 
is  out  of  all  proportion  to  even  its  alleged 
motives. — E.  Dowden:  The  Shakespeare 
Primer. 

lanthe,  in  classical  mjrthology  the 
maiden  for  whose  sake  Iphis  was 
changed  from  female  to  male.  Sir 
William  Davenant,  in  The  Siege  of 
Rhodes  (1656) ,  took  the  name  for 
his  leading  female  character.  Pepys's 
Diary  often  refers  to  Mrs.  Betterton 
as  lanthe,  because  that  was  the  part 
in  which  he  most  admired  her.  Shelley 
and  Byron  have  made  the  name  famil- 
iar to  modem  readers.  Shelley's 
lanthe  in  Queen  Mab  (18 10)  is  the 
maiden  to  whom  the  queen  appears 
in  a  dream.  Byron's  lanthe,  to 
whom  he  dedicated  his  Childe  Harold 
in  the  introductory  stanzas  written 


Ibbetson 


202 


If 


in  1 8 13,  was  Lady  Charlotte  Stanley, 
daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Oxford,  who 
at  that  time  was  only  fifteen  years 
old.  Before  either  Byron  or  Shelley, 
Landor  had  applied  the  name  to 
Miss  Sophia  Jane  Smith — afterwards 
Countess  Molande — in  some  early 
amatory  verses.  In  Byron's  case 
Landor  resented  the  appropriation, 
as  appears  from  some  verses  preserved 
by  Colvin  in  his  monograph  on 
Landor; 

lanthe,  who  came  later,  smiled  and  said, 
I  have  two  names  and  will  be  praised  in 

both; 
Sophia  is  not  quite  enough  for  me, 
And  you  have  simply  named  it,  and  but 

once. 
Now  call  the  other  up     .     .     . 
I  went  and  planted  in  a  fresh  parterre 
lanthe;  it  was  blooming,  when  a  youth 
Leaped  o'er  the  hedge,  and  snapping  at  the 

stem 
Broke  off  the  label  from  my  favorite  flower, 
And  stuck  it  on  a  sorrier  of  his  own. 

Ibbetson,  Peter,  hero  of  a  novel  of 
that  name  by  George  du  Maurier 
(1891). 

Even  the  "esoteric"  part  of  Peter  Ibbet- 
son— ^the  fantastic  theory  that  the  soul  may 
relive,  in  dreams,  its  own  and  the  entire  life 
of  its  race  in  time,  and  anticipate  both  in 
eternity — appealed  to  the  imagination  by 
the  simple  fervor  with  which  it  was  set  forth, 
and  melted  the  heart  by  a  sweet  if  deceitful 
glimpse  of  consoling  and  compensating  pos- 
sibilities. Peter  Ibbetson  was  the  sort  of 
book  which  one  reads  and  decides  to  keep, 
and  does  not  lend  to  everybody. — Atlantic 
Monthly. 

Ichabod.  When  the  ark  of  the 
Covenant  was  captured  from  the 
Israelites  by  the  Philistines  at  Ebe- 
nezer,  Hophni  and  Phinehas,  sons  of 
Eli,  were  slain.  Eli  perished  on  hear- 
ing the  news,  and  Phinehas's  wife  gave 
premature  birth  to  a  child:  "  And 
she  named  the  child  Ichabod,  saying, 
the  glory  is  departed  from  Israel  for 
the  ark  of  God  is  taken  "  (I  Samuel, 
Chap.  iv).  Ichabod  is  a  compound  of 
the  Hebrew  word  for  glory  and  a 
negative.  J.  G.  Whittier  applied  the 
term  to  Daniel  Webster  in  a  poem 
intended  to  rebuke  his  change  of  atti- 
tude toward  the  question  of  slavery, 
as  shown  in  his  "  Seventh  of  March 
Speech  "  (1850)  in  defence  of  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Law.     Thirty  years 


later,  in  The  Lost  Occasion,  Whittier 
made  such  amends  as  he  deemed 
proper  for  whatever  injustice  he 
might  have  done  to  Webster's 
memory. 

The  poem  of  Ichabod  has  been 
compared  to  Browning's  Lost  Leader 
(q.v.).  Stedman  couples  with  these  a 
third  poem,  strangely  overlooked,  as 
he  deems,  by  anthologists — the  Lines 
on  a  Great  Man  Fallen,  written  by 
William  W.  Lord  after  the  final  defeat 
of  Clay,  but  here  the  scorn  is  visited 
on  the  popular  judgment  that  to  be 
defeated  is  to  fall. 

Ida,  Princess,  heroine  of  Tenny- 
son's poem.  The  Princess;  a  Medley 
(1847).  Daughter  of  King  Gama, 
Ida  has  been  betrothed  in  childhood 
to  a  prince  she  has  never  seen.  In 
womanhood  she  repudiates  an  engage- 
ment not  of  her  own  making,  and 
having  ideas  on  the  reformation  and 
regeneration  of  women  she  retires 
from  the  world  with  a  number  of 
attendants  and  founds  a  tmiversity 
for  women  only, 

With    prudes    for    proctors,    dowagers    for 
deans. 

The  poem  shows  how  the  prince, 
after  many  rebuffs,  finally  comes  into 
his  own.  It  has  been  suggested  that 
the  germ  of  the  poem  is  found  in  the 
last  chapter  of  Johnson's  Rasselas, 
"  The  Princess  thought  that  of  all 
sublunary  things  knowledge  was  the 
best.  She  desired  first  to  learn  all 
sciences,  and  then  proposed  to  found 
a  college  of  learned  women  in  which 
she  would  preside;  that,  by  conversing 
with  the  old  and  educating  the  young, 
she  might  divide  her  time  between 
the  acquisition  and  communication 
of  wisdom,  and  raise  up  for  the  next 
age  models  of  prudence  and  patterns 
of  piety."  But  in  fact  the  idea  dates 
back  still  earlier — to  the  play,  A 
Female  Academy,  by  Margaret,  Du- 
chess of  Newcastle,  and  just  a  hint 
of  it  may  be  found  in  Aristophanes's 
Lysistrata. 

If,  Castle  of  (Ft.  Chateau  d'lf),  the 
scene  of  the  imprisonment  of  Edmund 
Dantes  in  Dumas's  Monte  Christo,  is  a 
real  castle,  built  by  Francis  I  in  1530, 


Ignaro 


203 


Imogine 


which  occupies  an  island  in  the  Gulf 
of  Lyons  and  was  once  the  centre  of 
defence  of  the  roadstead,  the  chief  of 
the  twenty-two  forts  or  batteries  dis- 
tributed along  the  coast  from  Cape 
Croisette  to  Cape  Couronne.  The 
spot  on  the  battlements  from  which 
Dumas  feigns  that  Dantes  was  thrown 
is  pointed  out  by  the  custodian.  Off 
in  the  distance  appears  the  island  to 
which  he  swam.  A  more  orthodox 
identification  is  that  of  the  cell  in 
which  the  Man  of  the  Iron  Mask  was 
actually  confined  during  the  greater 
part  of  his  imprisonment.  Equally 
historic  is  the  cell  of  the  Abb^  Faria 
who  was  a  real  character  actually 
confined  here  at  the  date  given  by 
Dumas.  It  is  a  fact  likewise  that  the 
Abb6  died  in  prison.  But  even  the 
gardien  smiles  when  he  shows  the 
remains  of  the  tunnel  constructed 
between  Faria's  cell  and  that  of 
Edmund  Dantes. 

Ignaro,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene, 
(1590),  foster-father  of  Orgoglio,  an 
old  dotard  who  walked  one  way  and 
looked  another  and  had  one  answer 
to  all  questions,  "  I  don't  know."  It 
will  be  remembered  that  the  members 
of  a  secret  organization  in  America, 
known  as  the  Native  American  Party, 
were  familiarly  known  as  Know- 
Nothings  because  they  answered,  "  I 
know  nothing  about  it,"  to  all  inter- 
rogatories concerning  their  society. 
Similarly  during  the  trial  of  Queen 
Charlotte  in  England  (1820)  the 
Italian  witnesses  answered  "  Non  mi 
ricordo  "  ("I  don't  remember  ")  to 
most  of  the  questions  asked  them. 
In  Mrs.  Inchbald's  comedy.  Such 
Things  Are  (1786),  Lord  Flint,  min- 
ister of  state  to  an  Indian  sultan, 
parries  every  embarrassing  question 
with  the  stock  phrase,  "  My  people 
know,  no  doubt,  but  I  cannot  recol- 
lect." 

nchester,  Janet,  in  George  Mere- 
dith's Adventures  of  Harry  Richmond, 
a  spoilt  child  who  develops  into  a 
noble  woman.  When  Squire  Beltham 
disinherits  his  grandson,  the  hero  of 
the  novel,  she  becomes  the  heiress  to 
all  his  property  but  she  saves  the 
situation  by  marrying  Harry. 


niyria,  King  and  Queen  of.  In 
Daudet's  Kings  in  Exile  these  are 
portraits  of  the  NeapoHtan  Francis  II 
and  his  wife,  a  sister  of  the  Empress 
of  Austria.    See  Christian  II. 

Hjritch,  Ivan,  the  principal  and 
practically  the  only  character  in 
Tolstoy's  gruesome  novelette,  The 
Death  of  Ivan  Ilyitch. 

There  are  many  deaths  in  literature,  but 
there  is  none,  I  think,  in  which  the  gradual 
processes  of  dissolution  are  analyzed  and 
presented  with  such  knowledge,  such  force, 
such  terrible  directness,  as  here.  The  re- 
sult is  appalling,  but  the  final  impression  is 
one  of  encouragement  and  consolation. 

W.  D.  H  DWELLS. 

Imlac,  in  Dr.  Johnson's  oriental 
romance,  Rasselas  (1759),  son  of  a 
rich  merchant  of  Goima,  Egypt,  a 
poet  philosopher  and  traveller  who 
accompanies  Rasselas  on  his  search 
for  happiness  and  moralizes  on  all 
they  see  and  experience. 

Imogen,  heroine  of  Shakespeare's 
Cymheline  (1605)  and  daughter  of  the 
titular  hero.  Her  husband,  Posthu- 
mus  Leonatus  {q_.v.),  makes  vicarious 
trial  of  her  virtue  much  after  fashion 
of  Cervantes's  Curious  Impertinent 
(see  Lothario),  accepts  as  true  the 
lies  told  him  by  the  baffied  and  re- 
vengeful lachimo  (g.v.),  and  orders 
his  servant  Pisanio  to  assassinate  her. 
Pisanio  instead  informs  the  lady  of 
his  instructions,  and  on  his  advice  she 
assumes  the  disguise  of  a  page  and 
enters  the  service  of  Lucius,  the 
Roman  general  in  Britain. 

Of  all  Shakespeare's  women  she  Is  per- 
haps the  most  tender  and  the  most  artless. 
Her  incredulity  in  the  opening  scene  with 
lachimo,  as  to  her  husband's  infidelity,  is 
much  the  same  as  Desdemona's  backward- 
ness to  believe  Othello's  jealousy.  Her 
answer  to  the  most  distressing  part  of  the 
picture  is  only  "My  lord,  I  fear,  has  forgot 
Britain."  Her  readiness  to  pardon  lacni- 
mo's  false  imputations  and  his  designs 
against  herself  is  a  good  lesson  to  prudes: 
and  may  show  that  where  there  is  a  real 
attachment  to  virtue  it  has  no  need  to 
bolster  itself  up  with  an  outrageous  or 
affected  antipathy  to  vice. — Hazlitt: 
Characters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays  (1817). 

Imogine,  the  Fair.  See  Alonzo 
THE  Brave. 

Imogine,  the  Lady,  in  Maturin's 
romance,  Bertram  (18 16),  the  wife  of 


Imoinda 


204 


Inglesant 


St.  Aldobrande,  who  renews  her  love 
for  an  old  flame,  the  titular  hero,  with 
disastrous  results.    See  Bertram. 

Imoinda,  in  Mrs.  Aphra  Bell's 
Oronooko  (1696),  the  daughter  of  a 
white  man,  commander  of  the  forces 
of  Angola,  a  negro  king,  and  the  wife 
of  Prince  Oronooko  (q.v.).  ^ 

Indiana,  heroine  and  title  of  the 
first  novel  (1832)  written  entirely  by- 
George  Sand  and  published  under  the 
famous  pseudonym.  It  embodies 
her  first  attack  upon  the  marriage 
system.  Indiana  is  a  creole  united  in 
loveless  bondage  to  Colonel  Delmare, 
a  hot-tempered  rheumatic  old  soldier, 
brutal  to  his  inferiors,  peevishly  cen- 
sorious toward  his  wife.  She  falls  in 
love  with  Raymon  de  Rami^re  and 
through  the  help  of  her  English 
cousin.  Sir  Ralph  Brown,  escapes 
from  the  island  of  Bourbon  in  the 
hope  of  joining  Raymon,  but  finds 
that,  unknown  to  her,  he  has  married 
in  Paris.  Sir  Ralph  thereupon  pro- 
poses that  they  return  to  the  island 
of  Bourbon  and  commit  suicide  by 
leaping  into  a  favorite  waterfall. 
They  do  leap  but  by  some  unex- 
plained circumstance  —  Sir  Ralph 
thinks  a  blue-eyed  angel  interfered — 
they  survive,  and,  the  husband  having 
^ed  in  the  interval,  live  happy  ever 
after. 

It  is  from  this  model  that  we  have  one  of 
the  favorite  types  of  woman  in  literature 
for  the  next  twenty  years — the  misunder- 
stood woman  (la  femnte  incomprise).  The 
misunderstood  woman  is  pale,  fragile  and 
subject  to  fainting.  This  fainting  was  not 
due  to  bad  health.  It  was  the  fashion  to 
faint.  The  days  of  nerves  and  languid  airs 
had  come  back.  The  women  whose  grand- 
mothers had  walked  so  firmly  to  the  scafifold 
and  whose  mothers  had  listened  bravely  to 
the  firing  of  cannon  under  the  Empire  were 
now  depressed  and  tearful  like  so  many 
plaintive  elegies.  It  was  just  a  matter  of 
fashion, — Ren6  Doumic,  George  Sand,  p.  81. 

Inez,  Donna,  in  Byron's  Don  Juan 
Canto  i,  10-30  (1819),  the  mother  of 
the  titular  hero,  supposedly  drawn 
from  Byron's  wife.  A  prude  and  a 
bluestocking,  she  worried  Don  Jose, 
her  husband,  into  his  grave  and  made 
her  son  recalcitrantly  improper 
through  an  educational  overdose  of 
the  proprieties. 


Infant  Phenomenon,  in  Dickens's 
Nicholas  Nickleby  (1838),  the  name 
which  her  fond  father  Nicholas 
Crummies  gives  to  his  eight-year-old 
daughter  Ivinetta,  and  under  which 
he  bills  her  in  his  programmes. 

The  American  Notes  and  Queries, 
February  23,  1889,  preserves  a  com- 
munication from  an  old  English  actor 
who  identifies  the  Infant  Phenomenon 
with  the  daughter  of  a  strolling  player 
named  Davenport. 

She  borrowed  my  wig  and  played  Peter 
Teazle  well  at  the  age  of  twelve.  Those 
little  English  villages  are  often  merely  one 
long  street,  and  Davenport  would  pick  out 
a  lodging  which  all  the  churchgoers  would 
have  to  pass  Sunday  morning.  He  would 
dress  up  the  infant  phenomenon  and  make 
her  sit  dancing  a  big  doll  where  she  could 
be  seen  in  the  window,  and  the  people  would 
stand  in  groups  open-mouthed  in  wonder  at 
the  baby  who  played  with  her  doll  in  the 
morning  and  trod  the  boards  at  night  as 
Macbeth.  Then  the  family  formed  in  pro- 
cession with  prayer-books  in  their  hands 
and  the  vanity  of  earthly  joys  in  their  faces, 
and  went  to  church.  Davenport  went  first, 
his  wife  behind,  and  the  phenomenon  in  the 
rear,  and  always  managed  to  reach  the 
church  just  after  everybody  else  was  seated, 
and  marched  up  the  aisle  to  the  communion- 
table in  a  style  of  pure  melodrama,  thus 
attracting  the  attention  of  all  to  the  phe- 
nomenon. 

Ingenu,  The,  in  Voltaire^s  story  of 
that  name  (Fr.  U Ingenu,  1767),  a 
young  Canadian  half-breed,  sprung 
from  European  forefathers  and  a 
Huron  mother  who  comes  by  chance 
to  live  with  his  surviving  relatives  in 
France.  He  is  described  as  a  being 
of  impossible  virtue,  summing  up  aU 
the  best  qualities  of  man  in  his  natural 
and  unsophisticated  state — the  satire 
of  the  story  lying  in  the  contrast 
between  his  simple  and  noble  nature, 
and  the  meanness,  hypocrisy  and 
falsehood  of  the  civilized  beings  whom 
he  looks  up  to  as  his  superiors. 

Inglesant,  John,  hero  and  title  of 
a  historical  romance  by  John  Henry 
Shorthouse.  The  scene  is  laid  in  the 
time  of  Charles  I.  Inglesant  is  a 
sensitive,  imaginative,  dreamy  young 
man  with  a  Protestant  head  and  a 
Catholic  heart  who  has  developed 
constimmate  tact  through  the  Jesuit 
training  intended  to  fit  him  for  the 
task  of  mediator  between  the  Catho- 
lics and  Protestants  in  England. 


Ingoldsby 


205 


Irene 


The  author's  power  as  a  story-teller  is 
shown  in  his  tacitly  saying  to  the  reader 
"My  hero  is  weak,  but  I  defy  you  to  despise 
him!"     The  hero  is,  indeed,  the  tool  of  a 

iesuit,  but  so  noble  a  tool  that  we  forgive 
im  for  being  one;  he  loves  a  woman  not 
by  any  means  above  the  average,  but  be- 
cause he  is  true  to  her  we  respect  his  mar- 
riage; and  he  is  willing  to  die  with  a  lie  that 
disgraces  him  on  his  lips,  that  the  lie  may 
save  the  honor  of  a  king  whom  he  does  not 
greatly  love,  and  serve  the  purpose  of  a 
religious  party  to  which  he  does  not  openly 
belong. — Saturday  Review. 

Ingoldsby,  Thomas,  the  feigned 
editor  of  the  Ingoldsby  Legends, 
which  are  supposed  to  have  been 
disinterred  from  the  family  chest  of 
the  Ingoldsbys. 

These  legends  are  a  medley  of  prose 
and  verse,  the  latter  remarkable  for 
their  exuberant  spirits  and  their  gro- 
tesque felicities  of  rhyme  and  rhythm. 
The  real  author  was  Rev.  Richard 
Harris  Barham. 

Inkle,  Thomas,  hero  of  the  story. 
Inkle  and  Yarico,  in  Addison  and 
Steele's  Spectator.    See  Yarico. 

Innes,  Evelyn,  heroine  of  a  novel 
of  that  name  (1898)  by  George  Moore 
and  of  its  sequel,  Sister  Teresa  (1901). 
An  impassioned  young  woman  of  odd 
antecedents  and  of  great  musical 
genius,  she  falls  under  the  influences, 
successively,  of  an  agnostic  man  of 
the  world,  of  an  artist  and  a  mystic, 
and  of  a  Catholic  priest.  Conscience 
drives  her  to  give  up  an  immoral  life, 
enter  a  CathoHc  sisterhood,  as  the 
"  Sister  Teresa  **  of  the  sequel,  and 
devote  the  rest  of  her  life  to  penance. 

Insarof,  Demetri,  in  Tourgenief's 
On  the  Eve,  a  yoimg  Bulgarian  patriot 
who  devotes  his  life  to  freeing  his 
country  from  the  Turkish  yoke. 
Elena  Strashof,  a  brilliant,  imagina- 
tive girl,  an  artist's  model,  of  noble 
but  impoverished  lineage,  falls  in 
love  with  him.  Insarof  would  fain 
break  away  from  her  lest  she  interfere 
with  his  self-imposed  mission  but  she 
shows  that  she  is  willing  to  abandon 
home  and  country  for  his  sake.  The 
struggle  between  passion  and  patriot- 
ism, intensified  by  his  dread  of  in- 
volving her  in  peril,  ends  in  a  danger- 
ous illness  from  which  he  recovers 
long  enough  to  marry  her  and  then 
falls  back  into  a  fatal  relapse.    She 


joins  the  sisters  of  Mercy  in  the 
Bulgarian  army. 

Interpreter,  Mr.,  in  Bunyan's  Pil- 
grim's Progress,  Part  I  (1678),  lord 
of  a  house,  a  little  beyond  the  Wicket 
Gate,  where  Christian  is  relieved  of 
his  doubts.  He  may  be  taken  as  a 
symbol  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  its  action 
upon  hearts  that  are  well  disposed. 

lone,  to  whom  some  of  Landor's 
early  verses  were  addressed,  was  a 
Miss  Jones.  The  process  by  which 
the  name  was  hellenized  is  thus  poeti- 
cally explained  in  some  verses  of 
Landor's  which  Professor  Colvin  has 
preserved  in  his  Life  of  the  poet: 

lon^  was  the  first.    Her  name  is  heard 
Among  the  hills  of  Cambria,  north  and  south, 
But  there  of  shorter  stature,  like  herself: 
I  placed  a  comely  vowel  at  its  close. 
And  drove  an  ugly  sibilant  away. 

Ippolito,  Don,  in  Howells's  A  Fore- 
gone Conclusion  (1875).  A  Venetian 
priest  whom  circumstances  and  not 
belief  or  inclination  have  forced  to 
take  orders.  Not  only  ddes  he  chafe 
under  a  lack  of  faith  that  he  acknowl- 
edges to  himself  and  to  his  intimates, 
but  he  finds  the  priesthood  an  obstacle 
to  his  normal  development  as  an 
inventor.  Falling  in  love  with  the 
American,  Florida  Vervain,  she  pities 
him  but  is  horrified  when  he  declares 
himself,  and  her  refusal  of  him  is  the 
remote  cause  of  his  death. 

Irena,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene, 
V  (1596),  a  personification  of  Ireland. 
Deprived  of  her  inheritance  by  Gran- 
torto  (the  rebellion  of  1580),  Sir  Arte- 
gal  was  dispatched  to  her  aid  and 
succeeded  in  restoring  her  to  her  own. 

Irene,  subject  of  a  poem  by  Edgar 
Allan  Poe,  which  originally  appeared 
under  that  name  in  a  juvenile  volume 
(1831)  but  was  later  republished  as 
The  Sleeper — an  apostrophe  to  the 
lady  Irene,  who  lies  dead  upstairs, 
from  her  distracted  lover,  who  has 
risen  from  his  bed  at  night  to  pace 
imder  her  casement. 

Irene,  heroine  of  Smoke,  a  novel  by- 
Ivan  Tourgeneif.  An  unprincipled, 
selfish  and  pitiless  coquette,  she  had 
jilted  Litvinof  for  a  more  brilliant 
match,  but  accidentally  meeting  him 
when  he  is  engaged  to  another  she 


Irene 


206 


Isaac  of  York 


does  all  in  her  power  to  revive  the 
old  flame  still  smouldering  in  his 
heart.  He  only  partly  trusts  her, 
respects  her  less  and  really  does  not 
love  her.  Nevertheless  for  her  sake 
he  breaks  his  betrothal  vows,  aban- 
dons all  the  purposes  and  hopes  of 
his  Hfe,  and  but  for  her  capricious  and 
cowardly  retreat  at  the  last  moment 
would  have  plunged  with  her  into 
utter  disgrace  and  ruin. 

Irene,  Countess,  in  Berthold  Auer- 
bach's  novel,  On  the  Heights  (Auf  der 
Hohe)  (1865),  a  young  beauty  whom 
her  father,  Count  Eberhard  yon 
Wildenort,  a  recluse,  has  placed  in  a 
German  court.  Her  vivacity,  intelli- 
gence and  unconventional  ways  cap- 
ture the  fancy  of  the  king,  wearied  as 
he  is  of  the  dull  monotony  of  state 
and  the  pious  sentimentality  of  his 
queen.  He  betrays  his  passion  by 
kissing  a  statue  of  Victory  for  which 
she  had  sat  as  model.  We  are  given 
to  understand  that  she  falls  with  him, 
but  whether  in  an  actual  sin  of  sense 
or  merely  of  the  imagination  is  left 
to  the  reader  to  determine.  At  all 
events  she  is  the  chief  sufferer.  She 
writes  her  guilt  to  the  queen  and 
plans  to  drown  herself  but  is  saved 
by  Walpurga,  wet-nurse  to  the  king's 
son,  who  takes  her  to  her  own  moun- 
tain home.  Here  Irma  for  a  year 
lives  "  on  the  heights,"  Hterally  and 
metaphorically,  occupying  her  time 
with  a  journal  of  philosophical  and 
religious  rhapsody.  Finally  she  dies 
in  the  presence  of  the  reconciled  king 
and  queen. 

Ireson,  Flood,  hero  of  Whittier's 
ballad,  Skipper  Ireson's  Ride,  was  in 
real  life  Captain  Benjamin  Floyd 
Ireson.  The  poem  tells  how  the 
skipper  for  his  hardheartedness  in 
sailing  away  from  a  leaking  ship  in 
Chaleur  Bay  was 

Tarred  and  feathered  and  carried  in  a  cart 
By  the  women  of  Marblehead. 

In  his  History  and  Traditions  of 
Marblehead,  Samuel  Roads  has  shown 
that  Ireson  was  a  much  maligned 
man.  A  terrific  gale  was  blowing 
when  his  ship  The  Betty  sighted  the 
wreck,  ajid  the  crew  decided  not  to 


risk  their  own  lives  for  others.  In 
vain  Skipper  Ireson  proposed  to  stay 
by  the  wreck  all  night,  or  until  the 
storm  should  abate,  and  then  go  to 
the  rescue.  "  To  this  they  also 
demurred  and  insisted  on  proceeding 
homeward  without  delay.  On  their 
arrival  in  Marblehead,  fearing  the 
just  indignation  of  the  people  they 
laid  the  entire  blame  upon  the  skip- 
per." Acknowledging  a  presentation 
copy  of  Roads'  book  Whittier  wrote: 
"  I  have  no  doubt  that  thy  version  of 
Skipper  Ireson  is  the  correct  one.  My 
verse  was  solely  founded  on  a  frag- 
ment of  rhyme  which  I  heard  from  one 
of  my  early  schoolmates,  a  native  of 
Marblehead.  I  supposed  the  story  to 
which  it  referred  dated  back  at  least 
a  century.  I  knew  nothing  of  the 
particulars  and  the  narrative  of  the 
ballad  was  pure  fancy.  I  am  glad  for 
the  sake  of  truth  and  justice  that  the 
real  facts  are  given  in  thy  book.  I 
certainly  would  not,  knowingly,  do 
injustice  to  any  one,  dead  or  Hving." 
Ironsides,  Old,  a  popular  nickname 
for  the  American  frigate  Constitution 
launched  at  Boston  September  20, 
1797,  which  had  won  no  small  fame 
by  the  capture  of  the  British  Guer- 
riere  and  other  exploits  in  the  war  of 
1812.  In  1825  a  proposal  was  made 
to  break  it  up.  Much  indignation 
was  aroused  in  Boston  near  which 
town,  in  the  Charleston  Navy  Yard, 
the  vessel  was  lying.  To  this  public 
feeling  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  then 
a  stripling  of  sixteen,  gave  voice  in  a 
spirited  little  poem.  Old  Ironsides 
first  published  in  a  Boston  newspaper, 
and  then  circulated  about  the  coun- 
try. The  verses  are  characteristic. 
The  ship 

-  No  more  shall  feel  the  victor's  tread 
Or  know  the  conquered  knee; 
The  harpies  of  the  snore  shall  pluck 
The  eagle  of  the  sea. 

The  effect  was  so  great  that  the 
proposal  was  abandoned. 

Isaac  of  York,  in  Scott's  historical 
romance,  Ivanhoe,  the  father  of 
Rebecca.  Befriended  by  Ivanhoe  he 
and  his  daughter  show  their  gratitude 
by  tending  him  when  he  is  wounded. 
"  Detested    by    the    credulous    and 


Isaacs 


207 


Ithuriel 


prejudiced  viilgar,  and  persecuted  by 
the  greedy  and  rapacious  nobility," 
he  found  that  in  wealth  lay  "the 
only  road  to  power  and  influence." 
But  while  following  this  road  he  was 
"  trampled  down  like  the  shorn  grass, 
and  mixed  with  the  mire  of  the  ways." 
Ultimately  he  and  Rebecca  leave 
England  and  go  to  live  abroad. 

Isaacs,  Mr.,  in  Marion  Crawford's 
novel  of  that  name,  a  study  of  the 
development  of  a  man's  higher  nature 
through  a  woman.  A  professed 
Mussulman  married  to  three  wives 
whom  he  regards  with  kindly  but 
contemptuous  tolerance,  he  meets  a 
noble  and  beautiful  Englishwoman, 
Miss  Westonhaugh,  and  falls  hope- 
lessly in  love  with  her  and  she  with 
him. 

Isabella,  heroine  of  Thomas  South- 
erne's  tragedy,  The  Fatal  Marriage 
or  the  Innocent  Adultery  (1694),  the 
supposed  widow  of  Biron.  Disin- 
herited for  marrying  he  has  gone  to 
the  wars  and  is  reported  dead.  After 
seven  years,  she  is  driven  by  poverty 
to  marry  Villeroy.  Next  day  Biron 
returns;  he  is  slain  by  the  minions 
of  his  younger  brother  Charles,  who 
accuses  Villeroy.  Isabella  goes  niad 
and  dies.  In  1770  a  revised  version 
of  the  play  was  brought  out  by 
Garrick  as  Isabella,  and  under  that 
title  it  was  ever  afterwards  acted. 

The  character  of  Isabella  Is  well  conceived 
and  worked  out  with  great  symoathy.  Her 
gradual  yielding  to  the  importunate  ad- 
vances of  Villeroy,  her  second  husband,  and 
her  grief  and  horror  at  the  discovery  that 
Biron,  her  first  husband,  is  alive  and  has 
returned  to  her,  are  depicted  with  consider- 
able power.  The  introduction  of  Isabella's 
and  Biron's  child  is  a  stroke  of  dramatic 
genius  and  must  have  materially  strength- 
ened the  play,  as  the  same  device  has 
strengthened  many  a  popular  drama  since. 
— Charles  Whibley:  The  Cambridge  His- 
tory of  English  Literature,  viii,  217. 

Isabella,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
Measure  for  Measure  (1603),  the  sister 
of  Claudio.  She  is  pursued  by  Angelo, 
but  even  to  save  her  brother  from 
death,  she  will  not  yield  her  purity. 
The  disguised  diike,  however,  per- 
suades her  to  a  stratagem.  She 
"  assents  in  words  "  and  substitutes 
Mariana  in  her  stead  (see  Mariana). 


The  plot  of  Measure  for  Measure 
is  similar  to  that  of  Whetstone's 
drama  Promos  and  Cassandra  (1578), 
which  he  turned  into  a  prose  story 
in  his  Heptameron  of  Civil  Discourses 
(1582).  Before  him  the  theme  had 
been  treated  by  Giraldi  Cinthio  in 
a  tragedy,  Epithia,  and  a  novella 
{Hecatommithiy  viii,  5).  As  Shake- 
speare has  called  his  heroine  Isabella 
and  not  Cassandra  he  is  generally 
assumed  to  have  borrowed  from 
Whetstone  rather  than  directly  from 
Cinthio.  He  was  less  obviously 
indebted  to  Robert  Greene's  Never 
too  Late  (1590),  whose  heroine,  Isabel, 
has  a  very  similar  adventure.  De- 
serted by  her  husband,  she  is  tempted 
and  threatened  by  Bernardo,  one  of 
the  burgomasters  of  the  city  of  Caer- 
branck,  but  successfully  resists  him. 
He  then  has  her  brought  before  the 
council,  of  which  he  is  executive  head, 
and  accused  of  adultery  by  a  false 
witness^  whom  he  has  suborned. 
Isabel  is  condemned  and  sentenced, 
but  the  witness  suddenly  repents  of 
his  perjury  and  confesses,  whereupon 
Signor  Bernardo  is  heavily  fined  and 
deposed  from  office. 

Isadora,  title  and  subject  of  a  poem 
by  Albert  Pike,  beginning 

Thou  art  lost  to  me  forever!    I  have  lost 
thee,  Isadore! 

Pike  claimed  that  Poe  had  plagiar- 
ized from  him  the  metre  and  the 
motive  of  the  poem  Lenore. 

Isbosheth,  in  Dryden's  satirical 
poem,  Absalom  and  Achitophel  (168 1), 
is  meant  for  Richard  Cromwell,  son 
of  Oliver,  the  great  Protector,  who  is 
called  Saul  in  the  poem.  The  analogy 
is  very  close.  Ishbosheth,  like 
Richard,  was  the  only  surviving  son 
of  his  father.  He  was  accepted  as 
king  on  the  death  of  his  father  by  all 
except  the  tribe  of  Judah,  just  as 
Richard  was  acknowledged  "  pro- 
tector "  by  all  except  the  royalists. 
Both  ruled  but  a  few  months. 

Ithuriel,  in  Milton's  Paradise  Lost, 
Book  iv,  the  angel  of  truth  whose 
spear,  by  the  lightest  touch ,_  exposes 
deceit.  Gabriel  sends  him  and 
Zephon  to  find  Satan  who  had  eluded 


Ivanhoe 


208 


Jack 


the  vigilance  of  the  angeUc  guards 
and  won  his  way  into  Paradise.  They 
found  him  "  squat  like  a  toad,  close 
at  the  ear  of  Eve  "  whispering  to  her 
as  she  slept 

Vain  hopes,  vain  aims,  inordinate  desires 
Blown  up  with  high  conceits  engendering 

pride. 
Him  thus  intent  Ithuriel  with  his  spear 
Touched  lightly  for  no  falsehood  can  endure 
Touch  of  celestial  temper  but  returns 
Of  force  to  its  own  likeness;  up  he  starts 
Discovered  and  surprised. 

The  name  and  the  character  seem 
to  have  been  invented  by  Milton. 
Klopstock  in  The  Messiah  (iii,  iv) 
borrows  both  and  makes  Ithuriel  the 
guardian  angel  of  Judas,  who  retires 
when  Satan  enters  the  traitor's 
heart. 

Ivanhoe,  Sir  Wilfrid,  Knight  of, 
hero  of  Scott's  historical  novel, 
Ivanhoe  (1819).  His  father,  Cedric 
of  Rotherwood,  disinherits  him  be- 
cause of  his  love  for  Rowena,  whom 
Cedric,  as  her  guardian,  had  be- 
trothed to  Athelstane.  He  follows 
Richard  I  to  the  Crusades,  returns 
to  England  disguised  as  a  palmer  and 
appears  at  a  toiunament  at  Ashby 
under  the  name  of  the  Disinherited 
Knight,  overthrows  Bois-Guilbert 
and  four  other  knights;  reveals  him- 
self after  he  has  named  Rowena  queen 
of  the  tournament;  is  still  rejected  by 
his  father;  finds  shelter  with  the  Jew, 
Isaac  of  York,  and  his  beautiful 
daughter  Rebecca,  champions  the 
latter's  cause  when  she  is  accused  of 
sorcery;  accidentally  overcomes  Bois- 
Guilbert;  is  finally  reconciled  to  his 
father  and  marries  Rowena. 

Ivanhoe,  like  an  honorable  gentleman, 
curbs  his  passion  for  Rebecca  and  is  true  to 
Rowena,  though  we  see  that  the  memory  of 
Rebecca  never  leaves  his  heart.     Ivanhoe 


behaves  as  in  his  circumstances  Scott  would 
have  behaved  instead  of  giving  way  to 
passion.  It  would  have  been  more  to  the 
taste  of  to-day  if  the  hero  had  eloped  with 
the  fair  Hebrew,  but  then  Ivanhoe  and 
Rebecca  are  persons  of  honor  and  self- 
control.  I  found  in  Scott's  papers  a  letter 
from  an  enthusiastic  schoolboy,  a  stranger — 
"Oh,  Sir  Walter,  how  could  you  kill  the 
gallant  cavalier  and  give  the  lady  to  the 
crop-eared  Whig?"  This  was  the  remark 
of  the  natural  man.  Scott  kept  the  natural 
man  in  subjection. — Andrew  Lang. 

Ivanovitch,  Ivan  (literally  "  John 
Johnson  "),  an  imaginary  personage 
embodying  the^  peculiarities  of  the 
Russian  people  in  the  same  way  that 
John  Bull  represents  the  EngHsh. 
Browning  in  a  poem  imder  this  title 
(1879)  makes  Ivan  the  name  of  a 
Russian  carpenter  who  hears  a 
mother  tell  the  ghastly  tale  of  how 
she  threw  her  little  children  to  the 
wolves  to  save  herself.  The  story 
is  an  old  one  but  Browning  adds  a 
new  end.  Ivan,  when  the  poor  fright- 
ened woman  had  confessed,  lifted  up 
his  axe  and  cut  off  her  head.  The 
mother's  sin  was  out  of  Nature:  the 
punishment  should  be  outside  of 
ordinary  law.  So  thinks  Ivan,  so 
think  his  neighbors;  so  the  village 
judge  decides. 

Ixe,  Mademoiselle,  heroine  of  a 
novel  of  that  name  (1891),  by  Lanoe 
Falconer.  A  Russian  governess  in 
an  English  family,  the  Merringtons, 
she  excites  suspicion  by  her  reticence 
and  reserve.  At  a  ball  given  by  the 
Merringtons  she  shoots  a  Russian 
count,  a  visitor  in  the  neighborhood, 
with  the  aid  of  Evelyn,  a  daughter 
of  the  house.  The  count  survives  his 
wounds,  Evelyn  escapes,  and  three 
years  later,  on  the  occasion  of  her 
marriage,  she  receives  a  letter  of 
congratulation  from  a  Russian  prison 
signed  simply  X. 


Jack,  Colonel,  titular  hero  of 
Defoe's  novel.  The  History  of  the 
Most  Remarkable  Life  and  Extra- 
ordinary Adventures  of  the  Truly 
Hon.  Colonel  Jacque,  Vulgarly  called 
Colonel  Jack  (1722). 


Colonel  Jack  is  a  young  Arab  of  the 
streets — as  it  is  fashionable  to  call  them 
nowadays — sleeping  in  the  ashes  of  a  glass- 
house by  night,  and  consorting  with  thieves 
by  day.  Still  the  exemplary  nature  of  his 
sentiments  would  go  far  to  establish  Lord 
Palmerston's  rather  heterodox  theory  of  the 
innate  goodness  of  man.     He  talks  like  a 


Jacques 


209 


James 


book  from  his  earliest  infancy.  He  once 
forgets  himself  so  far  as  to  rob  a  couple  of 
poor  women  on  the  highway  instead  of  pick- 
ing rich  men's  pockets;  but  his  conscience 
pricks  him  so  much  that  he  cannot  rest  till 
he  has  returned  the  money. — Leslie 
Stephens:    Hours  in  a  Library. 

Jacques,  from  Latin  Jacobus,  the 
French  for  James,  which,  being  the 
most  common  of  all  Christian  names 
in  France,  is  used  slightingly  or  con- 
temptuously like  the  English  Jack, 
to  which  it  is  etymologically  akin. 

Jacques,  titular  hero  of  a  novel  by 
George  Sand. 

Jacques  discovers  that  Octave  and  his 
wife  are  in  love  with  each  other.  There  are 
various  alternatives.  He  can  dismiss  his 
rival,  kill  him,  or  merely  pardon  him.  Each 
alternative  is  a  very  ordinary  way  out  of  the 
difficulty.  Jacques  cannot  resign  himself  to 
anything  ordinary.  He  therefore  asks  his 
wife's  lover  whether  he  really  cares  for  his 
wife,  whether  he  is  in  earnest  and  whether 
the  attachment  will  last.  Satisfied  with  the 
results  of  this  examination  he  leaves  Fer- 
nande  to  Octave.  He  then  disappears  and 
kills  himself,  but  he  takes  all  necessary 
precautions  to  avert  the  suspicion  of  suicide, 
in  order  not  to  sadden  Octave  and  Femande 
in  their  happiness  .  .  .  Jacques  is  "a 
stoic."  George  Sand  has  a  great  admira- 
tion for  such  characters.  Personally  I  look 
upon  him  as  a  mere  simpleton. — Ren6 
DouMic:    George  Sand,  p.  88. 

Jacques,  Pauvre,  hero  of  a  song  of 
that  name  by  the  Marchioness  de 
Travanet  which  was  highly  popular 
for  some  years  before  the  French 
Revolution.  Marie  Antoinette,  when 
she  conducted  her  imitation  Swiss 
village  in  the  Little  Trianon,  sent 
for  a  real  Swiss  giri  to  heighten  the 
illusion.  The  stranger  grew  melan- 
choly and  was  often  overheard  sigh- 
ing for  Pauvre  Jacques,  whereupon 
the  queen  sent  for  Jacques,  made  him 
marry  the  girl  and  settled  a  handsome 
dowry  on  the  pair. 

Jaffier,  in  Thomas  Otway's  trag- 
edy, Venice  Preserved,  a  prot^g6  of 
the  Senator  Priuli,  who  rescues  his 
daughter  Belvidera  from  shipwreck 
and  after  a  brief  courtship  marries 
her  clandestinely.  Priuli  wrathfully 
discards  them  both  whereupon  Jaffier 
is  induced  by  Pierre  to  join  a  con- 
spiracy against  the  lives  of  the  Vene- 
tian senators.  Belvidera  induces  him 
to  confess  all  to  Priuli,  under  promise 


of  pardon  to  the  conspirators  but 
Priuli  condemns  aU  to  death  save 
Jaffier.  The  latter  slays  his  friend 
Pierre  to  save  hini  from  death  on  the 
wheel  and  then  kills  himself.  Belvi- 
dera dies  raving  mad. 

In  Jaffier  we  have  a  vivid  portrait  of  the 
man  who  is  entirely  governed  by  the  affec- 
tions, and  who  sways  from  the  ardent  reso- 
lution to  a  weakness  hardly  distingtiishable 
from  treachery,  as  friendship  and  love  alter- 
natively incline  him.  The  Uttle  that  we 
know  of  Otway  warrants  the  impression  that 
he  was  such  a  man  and  assuredly  he  could 
not  have  excited  such  warm  interest  in  a 
character  so  feeble  in  his  offence,  so  abject 
in  his  repentance,  and  in  geneial  so  peril- 
ously verging  on  the  despicable,  without  a 
keen  sympathy  with  the  subject  of  his  por- 
trait Tout  comprendre  e'est  tout  pardonner. 
Richard  Garnett:    The  Age  of  Dry  den. 

Jaggers,  in  Dickens's  novel.  Great 
Expectations  (i860),  a  lawyer  of 
Little  Britain,  Pip's  guardian  and 
Miss  Havisham's  man  of  business.  A 
hard,  logical  man,  suspicious  of  others 
but  personally  above  suspicion. 

There  is  hardly  in  literature  a  more 
finished  specimen  of  the  legal  bully,  perfect 
in  the  art  of  hectoring  witnesses,  terrifying 
judges,  and  bamboozling  juries.  Even  when 
there  is  no  case  to  be  tried  he  cannot  get  rid 
of  the  contentiousness  of  mind  and  manner 
he  has  acquired  in  the  criminal  courts.  In 
private  conversation,  where  no  point  is  to 
be  gained,  he  refuses  to  admit  anything,  and 
cross-examines  everything  and  everybody. — 
E.  P.  Whipple. 

James  I  of  England  and  VI  of 
Scotland  (1566- 162  5),  called  by  his 
flatterers  "  the  English  Solomon  " 
and  by  Sully  "the  Wisest  Fool  in 
Christendom,"  is  admirably  drawn 
in  Scott's  historical  novel,  The  For- 
tunes of  Nigel: 

"He  was  deeply  learned,  without  posses- 
sing useful  knowledge;  sagacious  in  many 
individual  cases,  without  naving  real  wis- 
dom; fond  of  his  power,  and  desirous  to 
maintain  and  augment  it,  yet  willing  to 
resign  the  direction  of  that,  and  of  himself, 
to  the  most  unworthy  favourites;  a  big  and 
bold  assertor  of  his  rights  in  words,  yet  one 
who  tamely  saw  them  trampled  on  in  deeds; 
a  lover  of  negotiations,  in  which  he  was 
always  outwitted;  and  one  who  feared  war, 
where  conquest  might  have  been  easy." 

In  gentle  King  Jamie  he  had  a  model  of 
which  the  grotesque  absurdity  needed  prun- 
ing rather  than  exaggerating,  and  of  all 
Scott's  many  portraits  of  kings  the  slobber- 
ing, trotting  figure  of  James  is  the  most  truth- 
fiu  and  the  most  comic. — Andrew  Lang. 


James 


210 


Jamdyce 


James,  Truthful,  the  supposed  nar- 
rator of  several  of  Bret  Harte's  poems, 
including  The  Society  on  the  Stanislaw 
and  The  Heathen  Chinee.  The  latter 
was  originally  published  as  Further 
Language  from  Truthful  James. 

Janos,  the  principal  character  in 
Janos  the  Hero,  narrative  poem 
(1844)  by  Alexander  Petofi,  a  strange 
medley  of  epic  and  extravaganza 
based  on  popular  traditions.  A  Ger- 
man translation  by  Kertbeny  ap- 
peared in  1 85 1,  and  an  English  one 
by  Sir  John  Bowring. 

Janos,  a  herdsman,  dismissed  in 
disgrace  because  in  his  love  for  Duska 
he  has  neglected  his  sheep,  joins  a 
band  of  Magyar  Hussars,  under 
Mathias  Corvin,  who  are  marching 
to  aid  France  against  Turkish  in- 
vaders. They  traverse  Tartary,  the 
land  of  the  Saracens,  Italy,  Poland 
and  India — the  geographical  con- 
fusion being  in  purposed  imitation  of 
the  chivalrous  romances — and  at  last 
reach  France.  In  a  pitched  battle 
with  the  Turks,  Janos  slays  their 
pasha  and  rescues  the  King's  daugh- 
ter from  the  clutches  of  the  infidel, 
refuses  to  marry  her  but  is  richly 
rewarded  and  returns  on  a  dragon's 
back  to  his  native  village  to  find 
Duska  dead.  Once  more  the  Hero 
wanders  forth,  this  time  in  heart- 
broken search  for  death,  but  after 
nimierous  weird  adventures  in  Giant 
Land,  in  the  Land  of  the  Witches, 
etc.,  he  reaches  Fairyland,  where 
Duska  is  magically  restored  to  life 
and  to  her  lover,  and  they  are  King 
and  Queen  of  Fairyland  to  this  day. 

Jansoulet,  hero  of  Alphonse  Dau- 
AeVsnoYel,  The  Nahoh.  He  emigrates 
from  Paris  to  Tunis  with  only  half  a 
louis  in  his  pocket.  He  returns  with 
more  than  twenty  five  millions  and  be- 
comes the  prey  of  a  horde  of  penniless 
adventurers  whose  greed  even  his  prod- 
igality cannot  satisfy.  His  dining-room 
in  the  Place  Vendome  is  the  rendezvous 
of  projectors  and  schemers  from  all 
parts  of  the  world.   Finally  he  fails. 

Jaquenetta,  in  Shakespeare's  Love's 
Labor's  Lost,  a  country  girl  who  ex- 
cites the  jealous  rivalry  of  Don 
Adriano  de  Armado  and  Costard. 


Jaques,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
As  You  Like  It  (1598),  one  of  the 
lords  attendant  on  the  banished  duke 
in  the  forest  of  Arden.  His  soliloquy, 
known  as  the  Seven  Ages,  occurs  in 
Act  ii,  Sc.  I.  Lamb  in  a  sonnet  speaks 
of  the  fair  domain  of  Arden: 

Where  Jaques  fed  his  solitary  vein. 
The  Folio  of  1623  spells  the  name 
Jaques,  or  rather  laques,  but  other 
editions  sanction  the  intercalary  c  that 
recognized  its  Latin  origin  in  Jacobus, 
through  the  French  Jacques .  Shake- 
speare makes  it  a  dissyllable. 

Jaques  is  the  only  purely  contemplative 
character  in  Shakespeare.  He  thinks,  and 
does, — nothing.  His  whole  occupation  is  to 
amuse  his  mind,  and  he  is  totally  regardless 
of  his  body  and  his  fortunes.  He  is  the 
prince  of  philosophical  idlers;  his  only  pas- 
sion is  thought;  he  sets  no  value  upon  any- 
thing but  as  it  serves  as  food  for  reflection. 
He  can  "suck  melancholy  out  of  a  song,  as 
a  weasel'sucks  eggs;"  the  motley  fool,  "who 
morals  on  the  time,"  is  the  greatest  prize 
he  meets  with  in  the  forest.  He  resents 
Orlando's  passion  for  Rosalind  as  some  dis- 
paragement of  his  own  passion  for  abstract 
truth;  and  leaves  the  Duke,  as  soon  as  he  is 
restored  to  his  sovereignty,  to  seek  his 
brother  out  who  has  quitted  it,  and  turned 
hermit. — Hazlitt:  Characters  of  Shake' 
sp care's  Plays. 

Jaques,  Maitre,  in  Moli^re  s  com- 
edy, L'Avare  (1668),  a  factotum  play- 
ing the  combined  r61e  of  cook  and 
coachman  in  Harpagon's  niggardly 
household.  Whenever  he  is  addressed 
in  a  capacity  unsuited  to  his  costume 
he  solemnly  changes  smock  for  livery, 
or  vice  versa — a.  bit  of  by-play  that 
never  fails  to  find  the  audience. 

Jarley,  Mrs.,  in  Dickens's  Old 
Curiosity  Shop  (1840),  the  merry  and 
kind-hearted  proprietor  of  a  travel- 
ling wax- work  show,  "  the  only  stu- 
pendous collection  of  real  wax-work 
in  the  world  "  containing  one  hundred 
figures  the  size  of  life — "  the  delight 
of  the  nobility  and  gentry,  and  the 
peculiar  pet  of  the  royal  family  and 
the  crowned  heads  of  Europe."  She 
befriends  Little  Nell  and  engages  her 
to  display  the  wax-works  to  visitors. 

Jamdyce,  John,  in  Dickens's  novel, 
Bleak  House,  a  kindly  optimist  of 
sixty,  guardian  of  Richard  Carstone, 
Ada  Clare  and  Esther  Summerson, 
one  of  the  parties  in  the  suit  of  Jam- 


Jarvie 


211 


Jellaby 


dyce  V.  Jamdyce  which  has  occupied 
the  Court  of  Chancery  for  nearly  half 
a  century.  When  things  went  wrong 
he  was  sure  that  the  wind  was  "  in 
the  East,"  but  when  they  righted 
themselves  the  wind  was  "due  west." 

Jarvie,  Bailie  Nicol,  in  Scott's 
novel,  Roh  Roy,  a  kinsman  of  Rob's. 
He  is  a  Glasgow  magistrate,  and  a 
pawky,  petulant  purseproud  Low- 
land tradesman,  full  of  his  own  and 
his  father's  local  dignity,  full  also 
of  mercantile  and  Presbyterian  for- 
malities, but  kindly,  good-natured, 
and  ever  htunorous.  "  The  idea  of 
carrying  him  to  the  wild,  rugged 
mountains  among  outlaws  and  desper- 
adoes— at  the  same  time  that  he 
retained  a  keen  relish  of  the  comforts 
of  the  Saltmarket  at  Glasgow  and  a 
due  sense  of  his  dignity  as  a  magis- 
trate— completes  the  ludicrous  effect 
of  the  picture  "  (Chambers:  English 
Literature).  There  is  no  known 
original,  but  Charles  Mackay  of  the 
Edinburgh  Theatre  _  Royal  fulfiUed 
Scott's  ideal  to  the  life.  "  I  am  not 
sure,"  writes  Scott  to  Joanna  Baillie, 
"  that  I  ever  saw  anything  possessing 
so  much  truth  and  comic  effect.  At 
the  same  time  he  is  completely  the 
personage  of  the  drama,  humane  and 
irritable  in  the  same  moment,  and 
the  true  Scotsman  in  every  turn  of 
thought  and  action;  his  variety  of 
feelings  towards  Rob  Roy  whom  he 
likes  and  fears  and  despises  and  ad- 
mires and  pities  all  at  once  is  exceed- 
ingly well  expressed." 

Jarvis,  in  Edward  Moore's  domes- 
tic tragedy,  The  Gamester,  a  devoted 
servant  who  strives  to  wean  Beverley 
from  his  passion  for  the  gaming  table. 

Jeames,  the  original  English  form 
of  James,  retaining  that  pronuncia- 
tion, even  after  the  change  in  spelling, 
among  the  London  flur3cies  and  the 
classes  in  which  they  moved  and  from 
which  they  sprang.  Hence  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  name  in  Thackeray's 
burlesque,  Jeames's  Diary,  the  origi- 
nal of  which  is  a  footman  who  comes 
into  a  large  fortune  and  assumes  the 
name  of  Jeames  de  La  Pluche. 

Jeddler,  Dr.  Anthony,  in  Dickens's 
Christmas  story,   The  Battle  of  Life 


(1846),  a  self -imagined  "  great  philos- 
opher," kindly  at  heart  but  reneging 
his  own  kindliness  to  pose  as  a  cynic 
who  looks  on  the  world  as  a  gigantic 
joke.  His  daughters,  Grace  and 
Marion,  are  both  in  love  with  Alfred 
Heathfield,  v/ho  loves  Marion  but  is 
by  Marion  induced  to  marry  Grace. 
Jekyll,  Dr.,  in  R.  L.  Stevenson's 
allegorical  tale  of  the  dual  personality 
in  man,  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde 
(1886),  is  an  eminent  and  most  reput- 
able physician.  Mr.  Hyde  is  the 
worser  self  that  dwells  within  his 
members.  The  doctor  is  genial, 
handsome,  loving  and  beloved  by 
society.  Hyde  is  loathsome,  skulking, 
dwarfish,  as  evil  in  looks  as  he  is  in 
morals.  Dr.  Jekyll  accidentally  dis- 
covers how  to  separate  these  two 
personalities.  When  he  is  wearied  of 
the  virtues  of  Jekyll  he  can  become 
Mr.  Hyde  and  revel  in  vice  until,  sur- 
feited, he  welcomes  a  return  to  virtue. 
All  the  time  he  is  conscious  that  the 
ape-like  thing  within  him  grows 
stronger  for  each  fresh  liberation.  At 
last  he  can  no  more  be  transferred 
back  into  Dr.  Jekyll.  There  is  no 
longer  a  Dr.  Jekyll  left,  only  a  Mr. 
Hyde,  waiting  for  the  hangman,  and 
yet  it  is  the  soul  of  Jekyll  that  cries 
frantically  from  the  lips  of  Hyde. 

As  long  as  man  remains  a  dual  being,  as 
long  as  he  is  in  danger  of  being  conquered 
by  his  worst  self,  and,  with  every  defeat, 
finds  it  the  more  difficult  to  make  a  stand, 
so  long  Dr.  Jekyll  will  have  a  personal  and 
most  vital  meaning  to  every  poor  struggling 
human  being.  Mutato  nomine  de  te  fabula 
narratur,  so  craftily  is  the  parable  worked 
out  that  it  never  obtrudes  itself  upon  the 
reader  or  clogs  the  action  of  the  splendid 
story.  It  is  only  on  looking  back,  after  he 
has  closed  the  book,  that  he  sees  how  close 
is  the  analogy  and  how  direct  the  applica- 
tion.— CoNAN  Doyle,  National  Review,  vol. 
14,  p.  647. 

Jellaby,  Mrs.,  in  Dickens's  Bleak 
House  (1852).  A  sham  philanthropist 
who  is  not  all  a  sham,  for  she  succeeds 
in  deceiving  herself  as  to  the  sincerity 
of  her  interest  in  public  matters  and 
especially  in  the  scheme  of  unloading 
Britain's  superfluous  population  into 
Borrioboola-Gha  on  the  left  bank  of 
the  Niger  in  Africa.  So  entirely  is 
she  immersed  in  this  project  that  she 
neglects  herself  and  her  household, 


Jellicot 


212 


Jeronimo 


her  children  grow  up  ignorant  and 
unkempt,  and  her  husband  becomes 
a  bankrupt.  Her  eldest  daughter 
"  Caddy "  (Caroline)  gets  so  dis- 
gusted copying  unending  letters  to 
uncountable  correspondents  that  she 
gladly  marries  "  Prince  "  Turvey- 
drop,  exchanging  a  life  of  drudgery 
for  domestic  happiness. 

Jellicot,  Old  Goody,  in  Scott's 
Woodstock,  servant  at  the  under- 
keeper's  hut  at  Woodstock. 

Jenkins,  Peter,  in  Mrs.  Gaskell's 
Cranford,  brother  to  the  Misses 
Deborah  and  Mattie  Jenkins.  He 
nms  away  from  home  as  a  boy  and 
returns  to  restore  the  family  fortunes. 
Miss  Deborah  is  a  prim  old  maid,  a 
great  stickler  for  form  and  ceremony 
and  a  profound  admirer  of  Dr.  John- 
son. Miss  Mattie  is  gentle,  sweet- 
tempered  and  a  general  favorite. 

Jenkins,  Winifred,  in  Smollett's 
novel,  Humphrey  Clinker,  maid  to 
Miss  Tabitha  Bramble. 

Not  even  the  Malapropism  of  Sheridan 
or  Dickens  is  quite  as  riotously  diverting,  as 
rich  in  the  unexpected  turns,  as  that  of 
Tabitha  Bramble  and  Winifred  Jenkins, 
especially  Winifred,  who  remains  delightful 
even  when  deduction  is  made  of  the  poor 
and  very  mechanical  fun  extracted  from  the 
parody  of  her  pietistic  phraseology.  That 
It  could  ever  have  been  considered  witty  to 
spell  "grace"  "grease,"  and  Bible  "byebill," 
can  only  be  explained  by  the  indiscriminate 
hostility  of  the  earlier  assailants  of  Enthusi- 
asm.— Austin  Dobson,  Eighteenth  Century 
Vignettes,  ii,  140. 

Jenkinson,  Dr.,  in  W.  H.  Mallock's 
satire,  The  New^  Republic  (1877),  is 
meant  as  a  caricature  of  Dr.  Ben- 
jamin Jowett  (1817-1893),  Master 
of  Baliol  College,  Oxford,  and  trans- 
lator of  Plato.  Dr.  Jenkinson 
preaches  a  latitudinarian  sermon 
barely  distinguishable,  if  at  all,  from 
out-and-out  infidelity,  which  it  is 
said  annoyed  Dr.  Jowett  very  much. 

Jenkinson,  Ephraim,  in  Gold- 
smith's Vicar  of  Wakefield,  a  swindler 
who  imposes  upon  Dr.  Primrose  by 
his  venerable  appearance,  his  piety, 
his  fluent  talk  about  "  cosmogony," 
and  his  approval  of  the  vicar's  pet 
theory  concerning  monogamy. 

Jenkinson,  Mrs.  Montstuait,  in 
George    Meredith's    The    Egoist,  a 


widow,  wealthy,  clever  and  domi- 
neering, who  rules  society  in  the 
county  where  Sir  Willoughby  Patt- 
erne  lives. 

Jennico,  Basil,  in  The  Pride  of 
Jennico  (1898),  a  novel  by  Agnes  and 
Egerton  Castle,  a  young  Englishman 
who  inherits  the  castle  of  Tollend- 
dhal  in  Bohemia  on  condition  that  he 
shall  marry  none  but  a  woman  of 
noble  blood.  Accident  throws  in  his 
way  the  Princess  Marie  Ottilie  and 
her  waiting  maid  who  have  exchanged 
characters  in  a  mad  prank,  and  the 
novel  shows  how  he  married  the  dis- 
guised princess  through  that  lady's 
stratagem  although  he  had  wooed  and 
won  the  substitute. 

Jenny,  subject  of  a  short  poem  by 
D.  G.  Rossetti,  an  analysis  of  the 
life  and  feelings  of  a  courtesan.  The 
poem  is  uttered  in  the  person  of  one 
who  has  half  accidentally  dropped 
again  into  a  momentary  companion- 
ship, such  as  had  once  been  too 
familiar  with  him,  and  soliloquizes 
over  the  poor  mercenary  beauty  who 
has  faUen  into  the  unexpected  slum- 
ber of  pure  weariness. 

Jermyn,  Matthew,  in  George 
Eliot's  Felix  Holt,  a  lawyer,  the 
father  of  Harold  Transome,  and  him- 
self secretly  married  to  Mrs.  Tran- 
some. 

Jerome,  Edwards,  hero  of  Mary 
Wilkins  Freeman's  novel,  Jerome.  A 
poor  young  man  with  no  apparent 
prospects,  he  promises  that  he  will 
give  away  to  the  town  poor  all  his 
wealth  if  he  ever  makes  it.  Two 
incredidous  rich  men,  taunted  by  the 
jibes  of  the  company,  declare  that  if 
within  ten  years  he  receives  and  gives 
away  as  much  as  $10,000  they  on 
their  side  will  give  away  to  the  poor 
one-fourth  of  their  property.  Jerorne 
comes  into  a  fortune,  keeps  his 
promise,  and  the  rich  men  fulfil  their 
agreements. 

Jeronimo  or  Hieronymo,  hero  of  a 
play  of  that  name  by  Thomas  Kyd, 
and  its  sequel,  The  Spanish  Tragedy 
(1597).  His  verbal  peculiarity  is  to 
address  himself — "  Go  by,  Jeronimo  " 
— when  things  happen  awry.  This 
expression  caught  the  fancy  of  Eliza- 


Jess 


213 


Joan  of  Arc 


bethan  playgoers  and  was  multitudin- 
ously  caricatured  by  Elizabethan 
playwrights. 

Hostess:  You  will  not  pay  for  the  glasses 
you  have  burst? 

Sly:  No,  not  a  denier.  Go  by,  Jeronimy, 
go  to  thy  cold  bed  and  warm  thee. 

Shakespeare:    Taming  of  the  Shrew, 

Induction. 

Jess,  heroine  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  by  H.  Rider  Haggard  (1887). 
The  scene  is  laid  mainly  on  an  ostrich 
farm  in  the  Transvaal  during  the 
first  Boer  insurrection  in  1880.^  The 
main  incident  of  the  story  is  the 
hackneyed  one  of  two  lovers  who 
sacrifice  their  own  happiness  for  the 
sake  of  a  third  who  has  the  conven- 
tional right  of  prior  engagement. 
Jess  and  Captain  Niel  are  doubtless 
actuated  by  heroic  motives  in  re- 
nouncing each  other  because  Niel  is 
affianced  to  Bessie,  the  baby-faced 
sister  of  Jess,  but  a  more  reasonable 
solution  of  the  same  problem  has 
been  presented  by  Howells  in  The 
Rise  of  Silas  Lapham. 

Jessica,  in  Shakespeare's  Merchant 
of  Venice,  the  daughter  of  Shylock, 
who  elopes  with  Lorenzo  and  carries 
oflf  with  her  a  casket  full  of  money. 
Thus  she  prompts  the  agonized  cry 
"  My  daughter  and  my  ducats!  " 
which  may  have  suggested  to  MoHdre 
a  remote  analogy  in  Harpagon's 
lament  for  les  beaux  yeux  de  ma 
casette. 

Jim,  Lord,  the  title  of  a  novel 
(1900)  by  Joseph  Conrad  and  the 
sobriquet  of  its  hero. 

A^  young  officer  in  the  mercantile 
marine  whose  courage  is  tempered 
by  too  much  imagination,  he  momen- 
tarily loses  his  head  in  a  dire  emerg- 
ency, is  cashiered,  and  seeks  to  re- 
deem himself  and  recapture  his  ideals 
by  a  career  of  self-devotion  among 
the  savages  of  Malaysia. 

Jingle,  Alfred,  in  Dickens's  Pick- 
ivick  Papers  (1836)  a  swindler  of  easy 
manners,  affable  address,  and  abound- 
ing impudence  who  for  a  time  imposes 
upon  the  members  of  the  Pickwick 
Club.    His  conversation  is  a  hurried 

J'umble  of  staccato  phrases.     Henry 
Tving  made  a  great  success  of  the 


part  of  Jingle  in  a  dramatization  of 
the  Pickwick  Papers. 

Jiniwin,  Mrs.,  in  Dickens's  Old 
Curiosity  Shop,  the  mother  of  Mrs. 
Quilp. 

Jip,  in  Dickens's  David  Copper- 
field,  the  pet  dog  of  Dora  Spenlow. 

Joan  (see  Darby).  Joan  is  some- 
times the  name  of  Punch's  wife 
though  she  is  usually  called  Judy. 
Discredited  legend  tells  of  a  mythical 
Pope  Joan,  a  disguised  female  who  is 
said  to  have  reigned  as  Pope  John 
VIII  (855-858)  and  to  have  died  in 
childbirth  during  a  public  procession. 

Joan  of  Arc  (Fr.  Jeanne  Dare), 
known  to  history  as  the  Maid  of 
Orleans  from  her  chief  exploit  in 
reheving  the  city  of  Orleans  of  its 
EngHsh  besiegers  May,  1429.  She 
crowned  Charles  VII  at  Rheims,  July 
17,  1429,  and  then,  her  mission  ac- 
complished, would  fain  have  returned 
to  her  mother.  Charles  prevailed  on 
her  to  remain.  But  now  the  militant 
girl  prophetess,  hitherto  so  strangely 
successful,  failed  in  almost  every- 
thing. Only  sixteen  months  after  her 
first  appearance  at^  Vaucouleurs  to 
announce  her  mission  to  Robert  de 
Baudricourt  she  was  taken  prisoner 
by  the  English  at  Compiegne.  On 
May  30,  143 1,  she  was  burned  at  the 
stake  as  a  witch.  Her  extraordinary 
career  and  the  peculiar  combination 
in  her  of  simplicity  and  shrewdness, 
of  fire  and  gentleness,  of  the  peasant 
girl  with  the  mystic  and  the  saint, 
have  made  her  a  favorite  study  of 
dramatists,  poets  and  romancers. 
Early  English  slander  portrayed  her 
as  a  termagant  sorceress,  even  Shake- 
speare— if  Shakespeare  did  write  the 
First  Part  of  Henry  VI  in  which  she 
appears — reviled  her  as  "a  railing 
Hecate."  Worse  than  all  her  own 
countryman,  Voltaire,  vilely  sland- 
ered her  in  La  Pucelle  (written  1738, 
published  1755),  the  most  disgraceful 
poem  ever  written  by  a  man  of 
European  influence.  Posterity  has 
done  her  justice.  History  has  cleared 
her  name.  Her  personality,  so  strong, 
pure  and  simple,  emerges  from  the 
fiercest  light  of  criticism  without  a 
serious  blot.    Poetry  and  fiction  have 


JobUUes 


214 


John 


supplemented  history.  The  German 
Schiller  led  the  way  in  his  tragedy, 
The  Maid  of  Orleans  {Jung  -frau 
von  Orleans),  and  a  great  trans- 
atlantic humorist,  Mark  Twain,  has 
brought  up  the  rear  in  a  historical 
romance,  Personal  Recollections  of 
Joan  of  Arc  (1896).  The  American 
feigned  that  this  was  an  authentic 
memoir  written  by  **  the  Sieur  Louis 
de  Conte,  her  Page  and  Secretary.'* 

Joblilies.  A  nonsense  word  in- 
vented by  Samuel  Foote.  See  Pan- 
jandrum. 

Jocelyn,  in  Alphonse  Lamartine's 
poem  of  that  name,  a  young  student 
of  divinity  cast  out  of  Paris  by  the 
Revolution,  who  takes  up  his  abode 
in  a  cave.  Here  he  harbors  two  other 
refugees,  one  of  whom,  Laurence, 
turns  out  to  be  a  girl.  He  flees  from 
temptation,  becomes  curate  of  a  small 
Alpine  village,  whither  in  his  old  age 
Laurence,  now  a  great  lady  but  weary 
of  the  penalties  of  greatness,  comes  to 
make  her  last  dying  confession. 

Jocelyn,  Rose,  in  George  Mere- 
dith's novel,  Evan  Harrington,  a  high- 
spirited  girl,  daughter  of  the  kindly 
and  sensible  Lady  Jocelyn.  She  meets 
Evan  in  Portugal  and  eventually 
marries  him. 

Joe,  the  Fat  Boy,  in  Charles  Dick- 
ens's Pickwick  Papers,  Mr.  Wardle's 
page,  who  could  be  waked  up  to  duty 
but  invariably  went  to  sleep  again. 
"  Damn  that  boy,  he's  asleep  again!  " 
is  a  favorite  expression  with  Mr. 
Wardle  and  his  friends.  Mr.  F.  G. 
Kitton  tells  us  that  the  original  of  this 
character  was  probably  one  James 
Budden,  whilom  landlord  of  the  Red 
Lion  Inn  in  Military  Road,  Chatham. 

John,  Don,  in  Shakespeare's  Much 
Ado  About  Nothing  the  bastard 
brother  of  Don  Pedro,  Duke  of 
Arragon — 

He  !s  composed  and  framed  of  treachery. 

He  trumps  up  a  false  accusation 
against  Hero  on  the  eve  of  her  mar- 
riage. 

John,  Dr.,  the  nickname  of  Graham 
Bretton,  in  Charlotte  Bronte's  novel, 
Villette,  the  brilliant  physician  for 
whom  Lucy  Snowe  cherishes  a  "  one- 


sided friendship  "  which  she  describes 
as  "  half  marble,  half  life," — indig- 
nantly repelling  any  accusation  of 
"  warmer  feelings."  According  to  the 
autobiographic  heroine  this  paragon 
was  "  handsome,  bright-spirited  and 
sweet-tempered,  a  curled  darling  of 
Nature  and  of  Fortune  " — possessing 
in  short  all  the  graces  which  had  been 
denied  herself — "  bom  a  conqueror 
as  some  are  born  conquered." 

In  Villette  my  mother  was  the  original  of 
Mrs.  Bretton;  several  of  her  expressions  are 
given  verbatim.  I  myself,  as  I  discovered, 
stood  for  Dr.  John.  Charlotte  Bronte 
admitted  this  to  Mrs.  Gaskell,  to  whom  she 
wrote:  "I  was  kept  waiting  longer  than 
usual  for  Mr.  Smith's  opinion  of  the  book 
and  I  was  rather  uneasy,  for  I  was  afraid 
he  had  found  me  out  and  was  oflEended. — 
Sir  George  Murray  Smith:  In  the  Early 
Forties,  N.  Y.  Critic,  vol.  38,  p.  59. 

John,  Friar,  in  Rabelais's  romance, 
Pantagruel,an  unclerical  cleric  whose 
gluttony,  debauchery  and  imquench- 
able  high  spirits  furnish  much  of  the 
fun  of  the  book.  When  an  army  from 
Lerne  pillaged  his  convent  vineyard 
Friar  John  seized  a  cross  and  pum- 
melled the  rogues  without  mercy, 
beating  out  their  brains,  smashing 
their  lirnbs,  cracking  their  ribs,  gash- 
ing their  faces,  breaking  their  jaws 
and  dislocating  their  joints  (Gargan- 
tua  i,  27).  He  is  an  inseparable  com- 
panion of  Panurge  in  the  search  for 
the  oracle  of  the  Holy  Bottle. 

Throughout  the  book,  he  dashes  on, 
regardless  of  every  thing  in  this  world  or 
the  next.  If  there  is  a  shipwreck  or  a  skir- 
mish. Friar  John  is  foremost  in  the  bustle; 
fear  is  unknown  to  him;  if  a  joke  more  than 
usually  profane  is  to  be  uttered,  Friar  John 
is  the  spokesman.  The  swearing,  bullying 
phrases  are  all  put  in  the  mouth  of  Friar 
John.  Rabelais  loved  this  lusty  friar,  this 
mass  of  lewdness,  debauchery,  profanity, 
and  valor.  He  is  the  "fine  fellow"  of  the 
book;  and  the  author  always  seems  in  a 
good  humor  when  he  makes  him  talk. — 
For,  Qu.  Rev. 

John,  King,  hero  of  a  play  (1595) 
of  that  name  by  Shakespeare,  the 
first  of  his  historical  dramas.  An 
earlier  drama  on  the  same  subject. 
The  Pageant  of  King  John,  by  Bishop 
Bale  (supposed  to  be  written  in  the 
reign  of  Edward  VI),  was  bitterly 
and  even  brutally  polemic  in  its  anti- 


Johnstone 


215 


Jouarre 


popery  bias.  Shakespeare's  play  is 
founded  upon  The  Troublesome  Reign 
of  King  John  (159 1),  which  is  some- 
sometimes  attributed  to  him,  but  in 
the  later  version  he  has  toned  down 
or  rejected  all  that  could  be  offensive 
to  Catholics. 

So  long  as  John  Is  the  impersonator  of 
England,  of  defiance  to  the  foreigner,  and 
opposition  to  the  Pope,  so  long  is  he  a  hero. 
But  he  is  bold  outside  only,  only,  politically: 
inside,  morally,  he  is  a  coward,  sneak  and 
skunk.  See  how  his  nature  comes  out  in  the 
hints  for  the  murder  of  Arthur,  his  turning 
on  Hubert  when  he  thinks  the  murder  will 
bring  evil  to  himself,  and  his  imploring 
Faulconbridge  to  deny  it. — F.  J.  Furnivall, 
editor.  The  Leopold  Shakespeare. 

Johnstone,  Christie,  in  Charies 
Reade's  novel  of  that  name  (1855),  a 
female  vender  of  fish  in  Newcastle, 
England,  whose  native  refinement, 
brightness  and  generous  impulses  end 
in  her  capture  of  an  artist,  Charles 
Catty,  after  having  captivated  a 
peer — ^Viscount  Ibsden. 

Jones,  Tom,  hero  of  a  novel  by 
Henry  Fielding,  The  History  of  Tom 
Jones,  a  Foundling  (1749),  whose 
character  is  meant  to  be  representa- 
tive of  the  typical  young  Englishman 
of  the  period,  a  generous,  good- 
natured,  free-living  youth,  prodigal 
and  profligate,  hating  only  lies  and 
hypocrisy,  honest  and  truthful  in  his 
ordinary  habit  but  with  no  sensitive 
scruples  of  conscience  in  accepting 
anything  that  was  offered  him  in  the 
way  of  pleasure  or  profit,  however 
tainted  in  origin  or  degraded  by 
association. 

I  cannot  say  that  I  think  Mr.  Jones  a 
virtuous  character;  I  cannot  say  but  that 
I  think  Fielding's  evident  liking  and  admira- 
tion for  Mr.  Jones  show  that  the  great 
humorist's  moral  sense  was  blunted  by  his 
life,  and  that  here  In  art  and  ethics  there  is 
a  great  error.  ...  A  hero  with  a  flawed 
reputation,  a  hero  sponging  for  a  guinea,  a 
hero  who  cannot  pay  his  landlady,  and  is 
obliged  to  let  his  honor  out  to  hire,  is  absurd, 
and  his  claim  to  heroic  rank  untenable." — 
Thackeray. 

Jose,  Don,  in  Byron's  Don  Juan, 
the  husband  of  Dona  Inez  and  father 
of  Juan. 

Josiana,  Lady,  heroine  of  Victor 
Hugo's  historical  romance.  The  Man 
Who  Laughs  (Fr.  U  Homme  qui  Ril, 


1869).  A  natural  child  of  James  II 
of  England  whom  the  King  had  made 
a  duchess  in  her  cradle  and  betrothed 
(with  the  additional  stimulus  of  a 
magnificent  dowry)  to  Lord  David 
Dirry  Moir.  At  the  age  of  23  she 
still  spurned  the  matrimonial  yoke, 
not  from  coldness  of  temperament 
but  from  mingled  pride  and  love  of 
freedom. 

Bold  yet  inaccessible,  "  a  possible 
Astarte  in  a  real  Diana,"  Josiana  had 
sounded  every  depth  but  fallen  into 
none.  Everything  about  her  was 
two-fold.  She  had  one  eye  blue,  the 
other  black.  Light  and  darkness, 
good  and  evil,  love  and  hate,  mingled 
in  her  very  looks.  Lovers  she  had 
none  in  the  flesh,  yet  she  was  not 
chaste  of  spirit.  She  possessed  every 
virtue  without  any  innocence.  Men 
she  disdained;  she  yearned  for  a  god 
or  a  monster.  Failing  the  god, 
accident  threw  in  her  way  the  alterna- 
tive of  her  dreams.  This  modem 
Titania  fell  in  love  with  Gwynplaine 
(q.v.). 

Josselyn,  hero  of  George  Du 
Maurier's  hovel.  The  Martian,  a  bril- 
liant youth  who  comes  under  the 
influence  of  the  invisible  Egeria,  a 
visitor  from  Mars,  and  dwindles  into 
a  vague  abstraction. « 

Jouarre,  Abbess  of,  the  name  of  a 
drama  by  Ernest  Renan  (1888),  and 
the  semi-official  title  of  its  heroine, 
Julie  de  Saint  Florent.  She  is  in  love 
with  the  Marquis  d'Arcy,  who  loves 
her.  In  the  dark  hours  of  the  French 
Revolution  both  are  condemned  to 
the  guillotine.  Left  alone  in  their 
last  moments,  natural  impulses  over- 
master conventional  canons.  Jtdie 
succumbs  to  the  arguments  of  the 
marquis  that  the  laws  of  chastity 
which  they  have  hitherto  respected 
are  no  longer  binding.  Those  laws 
were  invented  merely  for  the  sake 
of  future  generations.  As  no  future, 
no  marriage,  no  family,  no  children 
exist  for  these  lovers  there  is  nothing 
to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  closest 
union.  "  Assigned  to  a  most  immi- 
nent death  we  are  free;  the  laws  es- 
tablished in  view  of  the  necessities  of 
a  durable  society  exist  no  longer  for 


Jourdain 


216 


Juan 


us.  Very  soon  we  shall  be  in  the 
absolute  of  truth,  which  knows 
neither  time  nor  place.  Let  us  antici- 
pate the  hours,  dear  Julie."  The 
lovers  pass  to  the  death  cart  radiant 
with  a  perfect  happiness  which  seems 
to  them  a  foretaste  of  heaven.  But, 
at  the  very  last,  he  alone  is  sent  to 
death  while  she  is  spared.  In  an 
agony  of  despair  she  attempts  her 
life  but  fails.  She  lives  to  become  a 
mother,  and  in  after  years  the  wife 
of  the  young  nobleman  who  had 
snatched  her  from  death. 

Jourdain,  Monsieur,  the  principal 
character  in  Moliere's  comedy,  Le 
Bourgeois  Gentilhomme  (1670).  An 
elderly  tradesman,  ill-educated  and 
ill-bred,  who  has  suddenly  acquired 
great  wealth,  he  is  filled  with  the 
desire  to  educate  himself  in  accord- 
ance with  his  new  station  in  life.  So 
he  hires  an  entire  corps  of  professors. 
Dancing  master,  fencing  master,  pro- 
fessor of  music,  etc.,  all  play  upon 
his  vanity  and  help  to  expose  his 
follies  and  his  weaknesses  to  the 
audience.  M.  Jourdain  is  particu- 
larly astonished  to  learn  from  his 
professor  of  philosophy  that  for  forty 
years  he  has  been  speaking  prose 
without  knowing  it. 

Joyce,  in  Mrs.  Oliphant's  novel  of 
that  name  (1888),  is  a  gracious  figure, 
gentle-bom  and  peasant-bred,  cul- 
tured through  her  natural  attraction 
for  whatever  is  noble,  and  sympa- 
thetic as  she  would  not  have  been  by 
a  more  artificial  training. 

Juan,  Don,  the  arch  libertine  of 
European  literature,  whose  popu- 
larity is  second  only  to  that  of  Faust, 
the  arch  sceptic.  His  legend  has  a 
remote  basis  in  fact.  Don  Juan 
Tenorio,  member  of  an  illustrious 
Seville  family  in  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, killed  Commander  Ulloa  after 
seducing  his  daughter  Giralda.  A 
statue  of  Ulloa  placed  above  his 
tomb  in  the  convent  of  St.  Francis 
was  destroyed  by  an  incendiary.  The 
monks,  suspecting  the  Don,  are  said 
to  have  lured  him  into  the  convent 
and  killed  him.  They  encouraged  or 
connived  at  the  wild  stories  which 
crystallized  around  the  memory  of 


the  prodigal.  These  first  took  hterary 
shape  in  a  drama  by  Tirso  de  Molino 
(Gabriel  Tellez,  1626)  entitled  Ee 
Burlador  de  Seville  y  el  Convidado  de 
piedra  {The  Blasphemer  of  Seville  or 
the  Stone  Guest).  We  are  here  shown 
how  the  sensual  excesses  of  Don  Juan 
so  undermined  his  faith  in  God  or 
devil  that  he  brazenly  visited  the 
commander's  tomb  and  invited  his 
statue  to  sup  with  him.  The  statue 
accepts,  keeps  the  appointment  and 
in  return  bids  Don  Juan  sup  with 
him  on  the  morrow.  When  the  Don 
appears  at  the  rendezvous,  the  statue 
seizes  him  by  the  hand,  and  amidst 
thunderings  and  flashes  of  lightning, 
the  earth  opens  and  swallows  him  up. 

The  story  passed  into  Italy,  was 
dramatized  at  Naples  by  Onofreo 
Giliberti  (1652),  appeared  in  France 
(1658)  in  a  translation  of  Giliberti's 
drama,  and  definitely  assumed  its 
place  among  the  great  masterpieces 
of  literature  when  Moliere  produced 
his  Festin  de  Pierre  (1665).  In 
Molidre's  hands  Don  Juan  becomes 
the  type  of  the  hardened  and  irre- 
claimable yet  brilliant  and  fascinating 
libertine,  the  literary  ancestor  of  all 
the  modem  race  of  seducers  from 
Lothario  to  Lovelace.  His  own  ser- 
vant Sganarelle  describes  him  as 
"  the  wickedest  man  that  ever  trod 
this  earth — a.  madman,  a  dog,  a  devil, 
a  Turk — a  heretic  fearing  neither 
heaven,  nor  saint,  nor  God,  nor  hob- 
goblin, spending  his  life  like  a  mere 
brute-beast,  a  hog  of  Epicurus,  a 
regular  Sardanapalus."  Nevertheless 
Juan's  high  courage,  his  gallant  bear- 
ing, his  light-hearted  grace  make  one 
almost  forget  the  wickedness  which 
is  so  constantly  and  steadily  pursued 
that  it  excites  a  bastard  admiration. 

From  the  dramatic  stage  the  char- 
acter passed  to  the  operatic  in  Mo- 
zart's Don  Giovanni  (1787).  Byron 
took  the  name  but  not  the  legend  for 
his  own  Don  Juan  (q.v.)  a  very  differ- 
ent character.  Very  different  also  is 
the  hero  of  Browning's  Fifine  at  the 
Fair  (q.v.). 

Juan,  Don,  titular  hero  of  a  satirical 
and  narrative  poem  by  Lord  Byron, 
in  sixteen  cantos.     Cantos  i  and  2 


Jubal 


217 


JuUa 


were  published  in  1819,  Cantos  3,  4 
and  5  in  182 1,  Cantos  6,  7,  8  and  9, 
10,  II  and  12,  13,  14  at  different 
dates  in  1823,  and  Cantos  15  and  16 
in  1824. 

Byron's  Don  Juan  has  little  in 
common  with  the  Don  Juan  of  legend 
except  the  name.  He  is  a  young 
Spanish  grandee,  who  having  been 
seduced  into  an  amour  with  a  married 
woman  older  than  himself,  is  obliged 
to  flee  from  her  husband.  His  ship 
founders  at  sea  and  he  is  cast  upon 
a  Uttle  island  in  the  ^gean.  Here 
he  is  succored  by  Haidee,  a  Greek 
girl  with  whom  he  falls  in  love.  Their 
union  is  celebrated  by  splendid  fes- 
tivities, in  the  midst  of  which  Lam- 
bro,  the  pirate-father  of  Haidee,  who 
had  been  given  up  for  dead,  suddenly 
reappears.  Juan  is  disarmed,  carried 
to  Constantinople  and  sold  for  a 
slave.  His  purchaser  is  the  Sultana, 
Gulbayez,  who  introduces  him,  dis- 
guised, into  the  seraglio  (see  Dudu). 
Afterwards  he  escapes,  arrives  before 
the  city  of  Ismail,  then  besieged  by 
the  Russians,  distinguishes  himself 
in  the  storming  of  that  place  and  is 
sent  as  special  messenger  to  convey 
the  news  to  the  Empress  Catherine. 
He  rises  so  far  in  the  favor  of  the 
Court  of  St.  Petersburg  that  he  is 
appointed  ambassador  to  England. 
The  poem  abruptly  ends  with  a  num- 
ber of  satirical  pictures  of  life  and 
society  in  the  latter  country. 

Jubal,  titular  hero  of  a  poem  by 
George  Eliot  (1874)  founded  on  the 
Old  Testament  story  of  the  son  of 
Lamech  and  Adah  who  invented  the 
"  harp  and  organ." 

Jubal  invents  the  lyre,  teaches  his 
tribe  how  to  use  it,  and  then  wanders 
away  in  quest  of  new  musical  inspira- 
tion. Returning,  an  old  man,  he  finds 
the  people  celebrating  his  anniversary 
and  glorifying  his  name,  but  when  he 
declares  himself  they  treat  him  as  a 
Itmatic  and  cast  him  out  into  the 
desert. 

The  immortal  name  of  Jubal  filled  the  sky 
While  Jubal,  lonely,  laid  him  down  to  die. 

Jude  the  Obscure,  the  familiar 
nickname   of   the   hero   of   Thomas 


Hardy's  novel,  Jude  the  Obscure.  An 
orphan  brought  up  by  his  great  aunt 
Miss  Fawley,  he  assists  her  in  her 
bakery  and  then  becomes  apprentice 
to  a  stonemason,  dreaming  dreams, 
meanwhile,  of  college  and  a  great 
career.  His  life  is  wrecked  by  an 
entanglement  with  Arabella  Donn 
who  traps  him  into  mismated  matri- 
mony. The  girl  he  loves,  Sue  Bride- 
head,  marries  the  village  schoolmaster 
but  leaves  him  for  Jude.  When  both 
get  a  divorce  Sue  objects  to  a  legal 
tie.  The  couple  have  two  children 
of  their  own  and  with  them  bring  up 
the  morbid  sensitive  son  of  Jude's 
first  marriage  who  ends  by  hanging 
himself  after  murdering  the  other 
offspring.  Sue  remorsefully  returns 
to  her  schoolmaster  and  Jude  to 
Arabella.  Jude  dies  in  an  effort  to 
reach  Sue  again. 

Julia,  in  Shakespeare's  Two  Gentle- 
men of  Verona  (1594),  a  young 
woman  who  disguises  herself  as  a 
page,  accompanies  Proteus  on  a 
journey,  and  so  wins  back  that 
recreant  lover. 

Here  first  Shakespeare  records  the  tender 
and  passionate  history  of  a  woman's  heart, 
and  the  adventures  to  which  love  may 
prompt  her.  Julia  (who  is  like  a  crayon 
sketch  of  Juliet,  conceived  in  a  way  suitable 
to  comedy  instead  of  tragedy)  is  the  first  of 
that  charming  group  of  children  of  Shake- 
speare's imagination  which  includes  Viola, 
Portia,  Rosalind  and  Imogen — women  who 
assume,  under  some  constraint  of  fortune, 
the  disguise  of  male  attire,  and  who  while 
submitting  to  their  transformation  forfeit 
none  of  the  grace,  the  modesty,  the  sensitive 
delicacy,  or  the  pretty  wilfulness  of  their 
sex. — E.  Dowden:     Shakespeare  Primer. 

Julia,  a  more  or  less  imaginary 
sweetheart  whom  the  Rev.  Robert 
Herrick  (1591-1674)  addressed  or 
alluded  to  in  amatory  poems  so 
decidedly  unclerical  in  tone  that 
Cromwell  in  1648  ejected  him  from 
his  church  living,  thus  reducing  him 
to  the  grade  of  Robert  Herrick,  Esq. 

Mr.  Gosse  assures  us  that  Julia  really 
walked  the  earth  and  even  gives  us  some  de- 
tails of  her  mundane  pilgrimage;  other 
critics  smile  and  shake  their  heads  and 
doubt.  It  matters  not,  she  lives  and  will 
continue  to  live  when  we  who  dispute  the 
matter  lie  voiceless  in  our  graves.  The 
essence  of  her  personality  lingers  on  every 
page  where  Herrick  sings  of  her.    His  verse 


JuHa 


218 


Kaled 


Is  heavy  with  her  spicy  perfumes,  glittering 
with  her  many  colored  jewels,  lustrous  with 
the  shimmer  of  her  silken  petticoats. — 
Agnes  Repplier:  Points  of  View:  English 
Love  Songs  (1891). 

Julia,  heroine  of  The  Hunchback 
(1832),  a  drama  by  Sheridan  Knowles. 
The  scene  is  laid  in  the  time  of  Charles 
I.  Julia,  brought  up  as  the  ward  of  a 
hunchback  named  Master  Walter,  in 
unsophisticated  ignorance  of  her  own 
origin  and  of  the  world  at  large,  falls 
in  love  with  and  engages  herself  to 
Sir  Thomas  Clifford.  A  season  of 
fashionable  frivolity  in  London  turns 
her  head,  she  breaks  with  Sir  Thomas 
and  is  affianced  to  a  young  man  who 
poses  as  the  Earl  of  Rochdale.  Sir 
Thomas  loses  his  fortune  and  becomes 
the  htmible  dependent  of_  the  Earl. 
He  appears  on  the  appointed  mar- 
riage day  to  announce  the  coming  of 
his  master.  Julia  breaks  down  and 
announces  that  it  is  he  whom  she 
had  always  loved.  Then  the  hunch- 
back appears  and  discloses  that  he  is 
the  true  Earl  of  Rochdale,  the  father 
of  Julia,  and  the  secret  mover  of  an 
elaborate  plot  to  recall  her  to  the 
right  path. 

Julian,  one  of  the  two  interlocutors 
in  Shelley's  poem,  Julian  and  Mad- 
dalo.  He  stands  for  Shelley  himself 
— as  Maddalo  stands  for  Byron. 

Julian,  Count,  semi-mythical  hero 
of  a  legend  which  has  been  versified 
in  Scott's  Vision  of  Don  Roderick, 
Southey's  Don  Roderick,  and  Walter 
Savage  Landor's  Count  Julian.  He 
was  one  of  the  principal  lieutenants 
of  Roderick  the  Goth  {q.v.),  but  when 
that  prince  violated  his  daughter 
Florinda  or  Cava,  Julian  allied  him- 
self with  Musca,  the  Caliph's  lieu- 
tenant in  Africa,  and  countenanced 


the  invasion  of  Spain  by  a  body  of 
Saracens  and  Africans,  commanded 
by  Tarik,  from  whom  Jebel  Tank, 
Tarik's  Rock — that  is,  Gibraltar — is 
said  to  have  been  named.  The  issue 
was  the  defeat  and  death  of  Roderick 
and  the  Moorish  occupation  of  Spain. 
A  Spaniard,  according  to  Cervantes, 
may  call  his  dog,ibut  not  his  daughter, 
Florinda. 

Jtiliana,  heroine  of  John  Tobin's 
comedy,  The  Honeymoon.  See 
Aranza,  Duke  of. 

Julie,  heroine  of  Jean  Jacques 
Rousseau's  sentimental  romance, 
Julie  ou  la  Nouvelle  Heloise  (1760), 
who  was  drawn  from  an  actual  flame 
of  his  own,  the  Countess  d'Houdetot. 
Rousseau  himself,  under  the  name 
of  Saint  Preux,  figures  as  the  modern 
Abelard,  in  love  with  his  pupil,  but 
too  honorable  to  play  the  part  of 
Abelard.  His  highborn  pupil  loves 
him  in  return,  but  they  are  parted 
and  she  marries  M.  de  Wolmar,  who 
is  better  suited  to  her  in  rank  and 
wealth.  Later  the  lover  is  invited 
to  return  and  he  lives  with  the  mar- 
ried couple  in  Arcadian  simplicity 
and  innocence.    See  Saint  Preux. 

Juliette,  in  George  Sand's  romance, 
Leone  Leoni  (1835),  an  infatuated 
young  girl  who  follows  over  Europe 
the  most  faithless,  unscrupulous  and 
ignoble,  but  also  the  most  irresistible 
of  charmers. 

It  Is  Manon  Lescant.  with  the  Incurable 
fickleness  of  Nanon  attributed  to  a  man; 
and  as  in  the  Abb6  Provost's  story  the 
touching  element  is  the  devotion  and  con- 
stancy of  the  injured  Desgrieux,  so  in 
Leone  Leoni  we  are  invited  to  feel  for  the 
too  closely  clinging  Juliette  who  is  dragged 
through  the  mire  of  a  passion  which  she 
curses  and  which  survives  unnamable 
outrage. — Henry  James, 


Kaled,  in  Byron's  poem,  Lara 
(18 1 4),  a  boy  page  in  attendance  on 
the  hero.  When  the  latter  is  slain 
by  an  arrow  it  turns  out  that  the  page 
was  a  girl  in  male  disguise: 
He   saw   the   head   his   breast   would   still 

sustain, 
Roll  down  like  earth  to  earth  upon  the  plain; 
He  did  not  dash  himself  thereby,  nor  tear 


The  glossy  tendrils  of  his  raven  hair, 

But  strove  to  stand  and  gaze,  but  reeled  and 

fell, 
Scarce  breathing  more  than  that  he  loved  so 

well. 
Than  that  he  loved!    Oh  I  never  yet  beneath 
The  breast  of  man  such  trusty  love  may 

breathe! 
That  trying  moment  hath  at  once  revealed 
The  secret  long  and  yet  but  half  concealed; 
In  baring  to  revive  that  lifeless  breast, 


Earenina 


219 


Kenneth 


Its  grief  seemed  ended,  but  the  sex  con- 
fessed; 
And    life    returned, — and    Kaled    felt    no 

shame — 
What  now  to  her  was  Womanhood  or  Fame? 
Lara,  Canto  ii,  1.,  1151. 
Kar^nina,     Alexis,     in     Tolstoy's 
novel,   Anna    Karenina  (1869),  the 
unloved  husband  of  the  heroine. 

A  bureaucrat,  a  formalist,  a  poor  creature, 
he  has  conscience;  there  is  a  root  of  goodness 
in  him,  but  on  the  surface  and  until  deeply 
stirred  he  is  tiresome,  pedantic,  vain,  ex- 
asperating .  .  .  Alasl  even  if  he  were 
not  all  these,  perhaps  even  his  pince-nez 
and  his  rising  eyebrows,  and  his  cracking 
finger  joints  would  have  been  provocation 
enough! — Matthew  Arnold:  Essays  in 
Criticism. 

Karenina,  Anna,  heroine  and  title 
of  a  novel  by  Count  Lyof  Tolstoy 
(1869,  EngUsh  translation  1886). 
A  Russian  noblewoman,  young  and 
beautiful  and  emotional,  she  is  mar- 
ried to  a  man  much  older  than  herself. 
Count  Vronsky,  a  young  officer  of 
superficial  brilliancjr,  falls  in  love  with 
her  and  she  with  him,  and  the  story 
deals  with  her  struggles  against  temp- 
tation, her  eventual  yielding,  her 
raptures,  her  terrors,  her  despair  and 
final  suicide. 

Karol,  Prince,  in  George  Sand's 
novel,  Lucretia  Floriani  (See  Flori- 
ANi) ,  was  evidently  drawn  from  Fran- 
Qois  Chopin,  with  whom  the  authoress 
lived  for  eight  years. 

It  may  have  been  to  the  glory  of  Prince 
Karol  to  resemble  Chopin,  but  it  was  also 
quite  creditable  to  Chopin  to  have  been  the 
model  from  which  this  distinguished  neuras- 
thenic individual  was  taken  .  •  .  What 
concerns  us  is  that  George  Sand  gives  with 
great  nicety  the  exact  causes  of  the  rupture. 
In  the  first  place,  Karol  was  jealous  of 
Lucretia 's  stormy  past;  then,  his  refined 
nature  shrank  from  certain  of  her  comrades 
of  a  rougher  kind.  The  invalid  was  irritated 
by  her  robust  health,  and  by  the  presence, 
and  we  might  almost  say  the  rivalry  of  the 
children.  Prince  Karol  finds  them  nearly 
always  in  his  way,  and  he  finally  takes  a 
dislike  to  them.  There  comes  a  time  when 
Lucretia  finds  herself  obliged  to  choose  be- 
tween the  two  kinds  of  maternity,  the 
natural  kind  and  the  maternity  according 
to  the  convention  of  lovers. — RenjS  Doumic: 
George  Sand,  u 

Karshish,  in  Robert  Browning's 
poem,  An  Epistle,  containing  the 
Strange  Medical  Experience  of  Kar- 
shish (Men  and  Women,  vol.  i,  1855), 
an  Arab  physician  who  meets  the 
risen  Lazarus  and  reports  his  version 


of  the  miracle  to  his  teacher  Ahib. 
He  strives  to  display  no  more  than  a 
scientific  interest  in  the  story  as  a 
mere  case  of  mistaken  trance,  yet  his 
imagination  is  haunted  by  the  mental 
transfiguration  of  the  man  who  in 
his  own  beUef  has  brought  back  into 
time  eyes  that  have  looked  upon 
eternity,  and  he  cannot  repress  a 
mysterious  awe  at  the  bare  possibility 
of  the  truth  of  the  story. 

Keeldar,  Shirley,  the  heroine  of 
Charlotte  Bronte's  novel,  Shirley 
(1849),  a  young  woman  of  free  and 
independent  spirit,  loving  nature, 
hating  shams  and  conventions,  join- 
ing feminine  wilfulness  to  a  will- 
power more  than  mascuHne. 

The  heroine  is  Emily  Bronte  as  she  might 
have  been  if  the  great  god  Wunsch  who 
inspires  day  dreams  had  given  her  wealth 
and  health.  One  might  as  readily  fancy  the 
fortunes  of  a  stormy  sea  petrel  in  a  parrot's 
gilded  cage.  Shirley  cannot  live  with  Jane 
Eyre. — Andrew  Lang:  Good  Words,  vol. 
XXX,  p.  239. 

Kehama,  hero  of  an  oriental  legend 
which  Southey  has  versified  in  his 
epic  poem,  The  Curse  of  Kehama 
(1809).  Mighty  lord  of  earth  and 
heaven,  he  claimed  dominion  also 
over  hell  but  was  punished  for  his 
presimiption  by  being  condemned  to 
**  the  immortality  of  death,"  and  in 
this  state  to  become  the  fourth  sup- 
porter of  the  throne  of  Yamen  the 
Mahommedan  Pluto.   See  Ladurlad. 

Kenneth  of  Scotland,  in  Scott's 
romance  of  the  Crusades,  The  Talis- 
man, the  name  assumed  by  David, 
Earl  of  Huntington,  when  as  an  ob- 
scure adventurer  he  enters  the  service 
of  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  in  Palestine. 
He  is  also  known  as  the  Knight  of  the 
Sleeping  Leopard  from  the  device  on 
his  shield.  Though  in  the  opening 
chapter  he  fights  bravely  against 
Saladin  (disguised  as  Sheerkohf)  and 
later  signaHzes  himself  in  a  secret 
mission  to  the  hermit  Theodorick,  he 
falls  a  victim  to  a  practical  jest  played 
by  Queen  Berengaria,  is  surrendered 
to  Saladin  by  Richard,  returns  dis- 
guised as  the  mute  Nubian  slave 
Zohauk,  a  present  from  Saladin,  saves 
Richard's  life  from  the  dagger  of  an 
assassin,  successfully  champions  hi§ 


Kent 


220 


Kim 


master's  cause  in  a  trial  by  combat 
with  the  traitor  Conrade  of  Mont- 
serrat,  and  being  acclaimed  under  his 
true  name  becomes  the  avowed  suitor 
of  Edith  of  Plantagenet  whom  he  had 
ever  loved. 

Kent,  Earl  of,  in  Shakespeare's 
tragedy,  King  Lear,  is  banished  by 
Lear  for  remonstrating  against  his 
treatment  of  Cordelia,  but  under  the 
gmse  of  Caius,  a  servant,  follows  the 
King  in  his  misfortunes  and  brings 
about  the  meeting  with  Cordelia  in 
the  final  scene. 

Kent  is  perhaps  the  nearest  to  perfect 
goodness  in  Shakespeare's  characters,  and 
yet  the  most  individualized.  There  is  an 
extraordinary  charm  in  his  bluntness,  which 
is  that  only  of  a  nobleman  arising  from  a 
contempt  of  overstrained  courtesy  and  com- 
bined with  easy  placability  where  goodness 
of  heart  is  apparent. — Coleridge. 

Kenwigs,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  In  Dick- 
ens's Nicholas  Nickleby,  an  ivory 
turner  and  his  wife  who  for  various 
reasons  looked  upon  themselves  as 
highly  genteel  and  were  generally 
looked  up  to  as  desirable  acquaint- 
ances. Their  daughters  were  pupils 
of  Nicholas  Nickleby. 

Kenyon,  in  Hawthorne's  Marble 
Faun,  a  New  England  sculptor  resi- 
dent in  Rome  where  he  falls  in  love 
with  Hilda. 

Mrs.  Elizabeth  Akers  Allen,  whose  first 
husband  was  Paul  Akers,  furnished  this  note 
to  the  correspondents'  column  of  the  New 
York  Sun  in  November,  1891:  "While  it 
is  true  that  W.  W.  Story's  statue  of  Cleo- 
patra is  mentioned  in  the  Marble  Faun,  it 
is  also  true  that  the  Pearl  Diver  and  the 
grand  calm  head  of  Milton  commented  on 
at  some  length  in  the  dialogue  between 
Miriam  and  Kenyon  in  his  studio  were  not 
works  of  Story  but  of  the  late  Paul  Akers,  a 
personal  friend  of  Hawthorne  in  Rome,  a 
native  of  the  same  state  and  an  artist  in 
whose  studio  Hawthorne  often  passed  a 
Bocial  hour.  In  his  preface  to  the  Marble 
Faun  Hawthorne  expressly  speaks  of  Mr. 
Akers  and  credits  these  marbles  to  him.  In 
the  text  of  the  romance  the  personal  descrip- 
tion of  Kenyon  is  a  portrait  of  Mr.  Akers. 

Kerouec,  Alain  de.  Marquis  de 
Rochebriante.  The  principal  char- 
acter in  Bulwer-Lytton's  novel,  The 
Parisians,  a  young  aristocrat  bred  in 
the  great  traditions  of  his  house  who 
cannot  fraternize  with  the  flippant 
jeunesse  dorie  of  the  metropolis. 
Although  impoverished  by  his  father's 


extravagance  he  never  dreams  of 
selling  his  chateau  or  going  to  work 
for  a  living.  What  he  does  do  is  to 
marry  the  daughter  of  a  great 
financier. 

Keyber,  Conny,  a  nickname  which 
Henry  Fielding  applied  to  Colley 
Cibber  in  The  Author's  Farce  (1731). 
A  burlesque  of  Pamela  entitled  An 
Apology  for  the  Life  of  Mrs.  Shamela 
Andrews  (1741),  whose  pretended 
author  is  "  Mr.  Conny  Keyber,"  is 
attributed  to  Fielding,  and  the  attri- 
bution is  all  the  more  plausible  be- 
cause at  that  date  it  would  seem 
that  Fielding  believed  Cibber  to  be 
the  author  of  Pamela  (see  Dobson's 
Samuel  Richardson,  pp.  43-45). 

Killingworth,originallyKenilworth, 
a  town  in  Connecticut  founded  1663 
which  is  probably  the  scene  of  Long- 
fellow's poem,  The  Birds  of  Killing- 
worth. 

I  found  among  his  papers  a  newspaper 
cutting — a  report  of  a  debate  in  the  Con- 
necticut legislature  upon  a  bill  offering  a 
bounty  upon  the  heads  of  birds  believed  to 
be  injurious  to  the  farmers,  in  which  debate 
a  member  from  Killingworth  took  part.  The 
name  may  have  taken  his  fancy  and  upon 
this  slight  hint  he  may  have  built  up  his 
story. — Samuel  Longfellow:  American 
Notes  and  Queries,  v,  198. 

Kilmansegg,  Miss,  heroine  of 
Thomas  Hood's  satirical  poem.  Miss 
Kilmansegg  and  her  Golden  Leg,  an 
heiress  with  great  expectations  and 
with  an  artificial  leg  of  solid  gold. 

Who  can  forget  her  auspicious  pedigree, 
her  birth,  christening  and  childhood,  her 
accident,  her  precious  leg,  her  fancy  ball, 
her  marriage  a  la  mode,  followed  in  swift 
succession  by  the  Hogarthian  pictures  of 
her  misery  and  death.— E.  C.  Stedman: 
Victorian  Poets,  p.  80. 

Kim,  the  nickname  of  Kimball 
O'Hara,  hero  of  Kipling's  novel  Kim 
(1901),  a  precocious  little  vagabond 
of  Irish  parentage,  orphaned  when  a 
baby  and  left  to  shift  for  himself  in 
the  depths  of  the  native  quarter  of 
Lahore.  He  meets  a  Thibetan  priest, 
Tesleo  Lama,  who  is  seeking  the  All- 
healing  River  of  the  Arrows  or  Stream 
of  Immortality,  becomes  his  disciple, 
and  roams  through  India  in  his  com- 
pany. Eventually  Kim  is  recognized, 
reclaimed  and  adopted  by  the  Irish 
regiment  to  which  his  father  belonged. 


King  of  the  Mountains 


221 


Ktxnigtinde 


His  apprenticeship  to  the  secret  ser- 
vice gives  him  unique  insight  into  the 
shady  walks  of  Anglo-Indian  life. 

King  of  the  Mountains,  hero  of 
a  novel  by  Edmond  About  (1856) 
exposing  the  brigandage  and  malad- 
ministration of  modem  Greece.  The 
narrative  is  placed  in  the  hands  of  a 
young  German,  who  with  two  ladies, 
the  wife  and  daughter  of  a  London 
banker,  are  represented  as  falling  into 
the  hands  of  the  king  of  the  mountains 
— a  brigand  named  Hadji  Stauros. 

Kirkwood,  Maurice,  in  O.  W. 
Holmes's  novel,  A  Mortal  Antipathy 
(1885),  a  young  man  of  good  presence 
and  good  family,  suffering  from  a 
singular  malady.  As  a  child  he  had 
been  dropped  from  the  arms  of  a  girl 
cousin.  Ever  after,  the  presence  of  a 
beautiful  woman  caused  a  violent  de- 
rangement of  the  heart's  action  and 
endangers  life.  He  cherishes  the 
hope  that  as  like  cures  like  some 
lovely  woman  may  lift  the  curse  from 
his  life.    His  hope  is  justified. 

Kite,  Sergeant,  in  Farquhar's  com- 
edy, The  Recruiting  Officer  (1706). 
By  sheer  audacity  and  vulgar 
aplomb  he  coaxes,  wheedles  or  bullies 
recruits  into  the  army.  Thoroughly 
frank  in  self -understanding  and  self- 
description  he  says  of  his  own  char- 
acteristics—  "the  whole  sum  is:  cant- 
ing, lying,  impudence,  pimping,  bully- 
ing,swearing,drinking,andahalberd." 

Kitty,  the  name  under  which 
Matthew  Prior  celebrated  Catherine 
Hyde  (i 700-1 777),  who  in  1720  mar- 
ried the  third  Duke  of  Queensbury  and 
is  also  famous  as  the  patron  of  Gay  and 
Swift.  She  was  high-spirited  and  whim- 
sical— a  spoiled  child,  a  beauty  and  a 
wit  at  odds  with  the  tyrannous  conven- 
tions of  her  time — ^but  her  character 
was  unblemished.  Bolingbroke  called 
her  LaSingularite.  Walpole  spoke  of 
her  frankly  as  "an  out-pensioner  of 
Bedlam."  Yet  four  years  before  her 
death  her  still  triumphant  charms 
extorted  from  this  most  persistent  of 
her  detractors  the  following  amende: 

To  many  a  Kitty,  Love  his  car 

Will  for  a  day  engage, 
But  Prior's  Kitty,  ever  fair 

Obtained  it  for  an  age! 


Klesmer,  Herr,  in  George  Eliot's 
Daniel  Deronda  (1876),  a  German 
musician,  poor  and  proud  and  of 
high  ideals,  who  teaches  Gwendoleth 
Harleth  and  incidentally  seeks  to 
convert  her  to  the  doctrine  of  hard 
work  and  self-sacrifice. 

Knight,  Henry,  the  second  lover  of 
Elfrida  in  Hardy's  novel,  A  Pair  of 
BltLe  Eyes  (1873).  He  is  an  author, 
inclined  to  Quixotry  and  even  prig- 
gishness,  a  little^  stilted  and  some- 
thing of  a  purist  in  his  notions  about 
women. 

Knight  is  a  genuine  man,  and  It  Is  not  his 
fault  if  he  is  uninteresting  in  proportion  as 
he  is  literary.  Since  Pendennis  and  War- 
rington, many  personages  of  our  calling 
have  figured  in  fiction,  and  they  have  nearly 
all  been  bores;  and  some  blight  of  tiresome- 
ness seems  in  novels  to  fall  upon  a  class  who 
in  life  are  so  delightful.  It  is  to  be  said  of 
Knight,  that  he  is  something  more  than  the 
conventional  literary  man  of  fiction;  but  he 
at  no  time  gives  us  the  sense  of  entire  pro- 
jection from  the  author's  mind  that  Stephen 
Smith  does,  and  that,  in  a  vastly  more 
triumphant  way,  Elfrida  does.  He  remains 
more  or  less  dependent,  more  evidently  a 
creature  of  the  plot ;  but  he  very  imaginably 
serves  as  the  object  of  Elfrida's  adoring  love, 
after  her  heart  has  helplessly  wandered 
from  its  first  ignorant  choice. — W.  D. 
HowELLS  in  Atlantic  Monthly,  October,  1873. 

Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle,  a 

title  assimied  by  the  hero  of  a  bur- 
lesque of  that  name  (161 1)  by  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher.  Like  Don  Quix- 
ote, which  was  translated  in  16 12,  the 
satire  is  aimed  at  the  exaggerations 
and  affectations  of  the  tales  of  chiv- 
alry. In  a  play  within  a  play  Ralph, 
a  grocer's  boy,  sallies  out  in  quest  of 
adventures.  "  Hence  my  blue 
apron!  "  he  cries.  "  Yet  in  remem- 
brance of  my  former  trade,  upon  my 
shield  shall  be  portrayed  a  burning 
pestle,  and  I  will  be  called  the  ICnight 
of  the  Burning  Pestle." 

Krook,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  Bleak 
House,  the  drunken  proprietor  of  a 
rag  and  bone  shop,  who  died  under 
circumstances  that  suggested  spon- 
taneous combustion. 

Kunigunde,  in  German  legend  the 
Lady  of  the  Kynast,  and  in  French 
annals  the  heroine  of  the  story  of 
The  Glove,  which  Schiller  has  versified. 
See  LoRGE,  De. 


Lacy 


222 


Lagado 


Lacy,  Sir  Hugo  de,  in  Scott's  novel, 
The  Betrothed,  Constable  of  Chester 
and  Lord  of  the  Marches,  a  crusader 
and  "  one  of  the  most  redoubted 
warriors  of  the  time."  He  left  his 
betrothed,  Lady  Eveline  Berenger, 
under  the  protection  of  his  nephew, 
Sir  Damian  de  Lacy,  and  returned 
after  three  years  to  find  she  had 
married  the  nephew. 

Randal  de  Lacy  in  the  same  novel 
is  a  remote  kinsman  of  Sir  Hugo,  "  a 
decayed  reveller,"  who  turns  up  at 
intervals  in  various  disguises,  a  mer- 
chant, a  hawkseller,  a  robber  captain. 

Ladislaw,  Will,  in  George  Eliot's 
novel,  Middlemarch  (1872),  a  clever, 
good-natured  and  easy-going  Bohe- 
mian who  flirts  with  Rosamund  Vincy 
though  in  love  with  Dorothea,  and  who 
marries  the  latter  after  she  has  been 
widowed  by  the  death  of  Casaubon. 

Ladislaw  is  almost  obtrusively  a  favourite 
with  his  creator.  He  is  called  "Will"  for 
the  sake  of  endearment;  and  we  are  to 
understand  him  as  so  charming  that  Doro- 
thea's ability  to  keep  him  at  a  distance  gives 
the  most  striking  proof  of  her  strong  sense 
of  wifely  duty.  Yet  Ladislaw  is  scarcely 
more  attractive  to  most  masculine  readers 
that  the  dandified  Stephen  Guest.  He  is  a 
dabbler  in  art  and  literature;  a  small  journal- 
ist, ready  to  accept  employment  from  silly 
Mr.  Brooke,  and  apparently  liking  to  lie  on 
a  rug  in  the  houses  of  his  friends  and  flirt 
with  their  pretty  wives.  He  certainly  shows 
indifference  to  money,  and  behaves  himself 
correctly  to  Dorothea,  though  he  has  fallen 
in  love  with  her  on  her  honeymoon.  He  is 
no  doubt  an  amiable  Bohemian,  for  some 
of  whose  peculiarities  it  would  be  easy  to 
suggest  a  living  original,  and  we  can  believe 
that  Dorothea  was  quite  content  with  her 
lot.  But  that  seems  to  imply  that  a  Theresa 
of  our  days  has  to  be  content  with  suckling 
fools  and  chronicling  small  beer. — Sir 
Leslie  Stephen:    George  Eliot. 

Ladurlad,  in  Southey's  epic.  The 
Curse  of  Kehama  (1809),  incurred 
that  curse  by  killing  Kehama's  son 
Arvalan  for  attempting  to  dishonor 
his  daughter  Kailyal.  The  curse  had 
manifold  clauses,  among  them  that 
water  should  not  wet  him  nor  fire 
consume  him  nor  sleep  bless  him  nor 
death  release  him.  In  the  end  the 
curses  turned  to  blessings  for  by  them 
he  was  enabled  to  release  his  daughter 
from  a  burning  pagoda,  to  deliver  her 
lover  Lorrimite  from   his   captivity 


under  the  ocean,  and  to  wreak  ven- 
geance against  Kehama  in  hell.  When 
Kehama  drank  the  cup  of  "  immortal 
death,"  Ladurlad  was  taken  up  to 
paradise. 

Lady  of  the  Lake,  in  Arthurian 
romance,  a  name  sometimes  given  to 
Vivien,  mistress  of  the  enchanter 
Merlin.  Her  palace  was  situated  in 
the  midst  of  a  delusive  lake,  a  mirage 
whose  mere  semblance  protected  it 
from  approach.  Scott  has  given  the 
same  name  to  Ellen  Douglas,  heroine 
of  his  poem.  The  Lady  of  the  Lake,  a 
former  favorite  of  King  James  IV  of 
Scotland,  then  living  in  banishment 
in  a  secret  retreat  in  Loch  Katrine. 

Ladylift,  Elinor,  in  Mrs.  Archer 
Clive's  novel.  Why  Paul  Ferrol  Killed 
his  Wife,  the  girl  with  whom  Ferrol 
{q.v.)  was  in  love,  though  he  was  in- 
veigled into  marrying  Laura  Chanson 
in  her  stead. 

Laertes,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy, 
Hamlet,  brother  to  Ophelia  and  son 
of  Polonius,  a  young  courtier,  gallant 
and  courteous  enough  when  things 
go  well  with  him,  but  easily  jarred  by 
adversity  so  that  his  naturally  chol- 
eric temper  bursts  out  into  noisy 
rhodomontade  and  he  can  even  be 
persuaded  into  treachery.  The  king 
induces  him  to  fight  Hamlet  in  a  sham 
duel  with  a  poisoned  foil.  After  he 
has  inflicted  a  deadly  wound  the  foils 
are  accidentally  exchanged;  thus 
Laertes  and  Hamlet  both  perish. 

La  Fayette,  Louise  de  (16 16-1665) 
was  for  two  and  a  half  years  the 
closest  friend  and  confidante  of  Louis 
XIII,  but  retired  to  a  convent  when 
he  proposed  to  make  her  his  mistress. 
On  this  episode  Madame  de  Gentis 
founded  a  historical  romance  Mile, 
de  La  Fayette  (18 13),  which  gives  only 
the  platonic  side  of  the  story,  paints 
Louise  in  glowing  colors,  hides  as  far 
as  possible  the  weakness  and  imbecil- 
ity of  Louis,  and  presents  Richelieu 
as  the  hypocritical  knave  and  Bois- 
enval  as  the  traitor  of  melodrama. 

Lagado,  in  Qulliver's  Travels  (1726), 
by  Dean  Swift,  the  capital  city  of 
Balnibari,  a  continent  subject  to  the 


La  Garaye 


223 


Lancelot 


King  of  Laputa.  Here  stands  the 
great  academy  of  inventors  and  pro- 
jectors, engaged  in  all  sorts  of  fanciful 
schemes,  ridiculing  the  speculative 
philosophers  and  pretenders  of  Swift's 
own  day.  Some  seek  to  extract  sun- 
shine from  cucumbers,  to  calcine  ice 
into  gunpowder,  to  build  houses  from 
the  roof  down,  etc.  ^  But  Swift's 
greatest  scorn  is  ironically  reserved 
for  a  set  of  political  projectors  who 
were  proposing  schemes  for  persuading 
monarchs  to  choose  favorites  on  the 
score  of  wisdom,  capacity  and  virtue, 
for  teaching  ministers  to  consult  the 
public  good  and  for  ensuring  the 
rewards  of  life  to  eminent  services 
and  great  abilities. 

La  Garaye,  Countess  of,  heroine  of 
a  poem  by  Hon.  Mrs.  Norton,  The 
Lady  of  La  Gay  are  (1862).  A  newly- 
wedded  and  most  devoted  wife,  she 
insists  on  accompanying  the  count  to 
the  hunting  field  and  there  meets 
with  an  accident  which  cripples  her 
for  life.  Her  only  fear  is  that  she 
will  be  unable  to  hold  the  affections 
of  her  husband,  but  he  removes  her 
doubts  by  word  and  deed. 

Laird's  Jock,  The.  See  Arm- 
strong, John. 

Lajeunesse  Gabriel,  in  Longfel- 
low's poem,  Evangeline,  the  lover  of 
the  titular  hero.     See  Evangeline. 

Lalla  Rookh,  titular  heroine  of 
Moore's  poem  of  that  name  (1817). 
Daughter  of  the  great  Aurengzebe, 
she  is  betrothed  to  Aliris,  the  young 
King  of  Buchuria,  and  sets  out  to 
meet  him  in  the  Valley  of  Cashmere. 
Her  journey  is  beguiled  by  four  tales 
recited  to  her  by  Feramorz,  a  young 
Persian  poet  with  whom  she  falls  in 
love.  Great  is  her  delight  on  arriving 
at  her  journey's  end  to  find  that  the 
poet  is  in  reality  her  affianced  prince. 

Lambro,  in  Byron's  Don  Juan 
(Canto  iii),  the  father  of  Haidee  and 
a  Greek  pirate  who  has  built  himself 
a  home  on  "  one  of  the  wild  and 
smaller  Cyclades."  Coleridge  praises 
this  as  one  of  the  finest  of  all  Byron's 
characters.  There  was  a  real  Major 
Lambro,  captain  in  1791  of  a  Russian 
piratical  squadron  which  plimdered 
the  islands  of  the  Greek  archipelago 


and  was  attacked  by  seven  Algerine 
cprsairs.  Major  Lambro  was  wounded 
but  escaped  with  his  life. 

"Upon  the  whole,  I  think  the  part  in 
Don  Juan  in  which  Lambro 's  return  to  his 
home,  and  Lambro  himself,  are  described, 
is  the  best — that  is,  the  most  individual — 
thing  in  all  I  know  of  Lord  B.'s  works.  The 
festal  abandonment  puts  one  in  mind  of 
Nicholas  Poussin's  pictures.!! — Coleridge. 

Lamia,  in  Keats's  narrative  poem 
of  that  name  (1820),  a  serpent  who 
assumes  the  form  of  a  fair  lady  and 
wooes  to  his  own  destruction  a  young 
man  of  Corinth.  Keats  found  the 
story  in  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly who  gives  jt  on  the  authority  of 
Philostratus  {De  Vita  Apollonii,  Bk. 
iv).  According  to  Philostratus  Men- 
ippus  Lycius,  a  young  man  of  twenty- 
five  was  met  on  his  way  between 
Cenchreas  and  Corinth  by  a  phan- 
tasm of  this  sort  who  carried  him 
home  to  her  house  in  the  suburbs  of 
Corinth. 

The  young  man,  a  philosopher,  otherwise 
staid  and  discreet,  able  to  moderate  his 
passions,  though  not  this  of  love,  tarried 
with  her  a  while  to  his  great  content,  and  at 
last  married  her,  to  whose  wedding,  amongst 
other  guests,  came  ApoUonius;  who,  by 
some  probable  conjectures,  found  her  out  to 
be  a  serpent,  a  lamia;  and  that  all  her  furni- 
ture was,  like  Tantalus's  gold,  described  by 
Homer,  no  substance  but  mere  illusions. 
When  she  saw  herself  described,  she  wept, 
and  desired  ApoUonius  to  be  silent,  but  he 
would  not  be  moved,  and  thereupon  she, 
plate,  house,  and  all  that  was  in  it,  vanished 
in  an  instant:  many  thousands  took  notice 
of  this  fact,  for  it  was  done  in  the  midst  of 
Greece. — Burton:  Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly, part  3,  sect.  2,  memb.  i,  subs.  i. 

Lammle,  Alfred,  in  Dickens's  novel, 
Our  Mutual  Friend  (1864),  a  **  mature 
young  gentleman  with  too  much  nose 
on  his  face,  too  much  ginger  in  his 
whiskers,  too  much  torso  in  his  waist- 
coat, too  much  sparkle  in  his  studs, 
his  eyes,  his  buttons,  his  teeth."  He 
married  Miss  Sophronia  Akersheim, 
"  a  mature  young  lady  with  raven 
locks  and  complexion  that  lit  up  well 
when  well  powdered. ' '  Each  imagined 
that  the  other  was  wealthy  and  both 
were  bitterly  disillusioned  after  mar- 
riage. 

Lancelot  or  Launcelot  of  the  Lake, 
the  most  famous  of  the  Knights  of 
the  Round  Table.    Son  of  King  Ban 


Langeais 


224 


Laon 


of  Brittany,  he  received  his  surname 
from  having  been  stolen  in  infancy 
by  Vivian,  the  Lady  of  the  Lake,  who 
brought  him  up  in  her  own  palace 
until  he  was  about  eighteen,  and  then 
took  him  to  the  court  of  King  Arthur 
to  be  knighted.  He  won  for  himself 
the  reputation  of  being  the  greatest 
warrior  and  the  most  accomplished 
Knight  of  the  Round  Table.  The  one 
blot  upon  his  name  was  his  adulterous 
passion  for  Queen  Guinevere,  which 
not  only  brought  misery  into  his  own 
life,  but  according  to  Tennyson  was 
eventually  the  cause  of  the  death  of 
King  Arthur  and  the  breaking  up  of 
the  Round  Table. 

Tennyson  has  taken  the  traditions 
in  regard  to  Lancelot  and  infused 
into  them  a  depth  of  meaning  quite 
out  of  the  reach  of  the  old  romancers. 
He  has  given  us  no  grander  concep- 
tion than  that  of  the  erring  knight  in 
the  Idylls  of  the  King. 

The  moment  this  strong,  sad,  tender, 
heroic  figure  comes  upon  the  scene  the  whole 
atmosphere  is  changed.  He  is  the  embodi- 
ment of  truth  itself  warped  into  falsehood, 
honor  itself  turned  into  dishonor.  We  have 
no  glimpse  of  Lancelot  in  the  first  triumph 
and  feverish  exultation  of  his  sin.  He  has 
found  it  all  out,  its  enormity  of  evil,  its 
bitterness,  its  growing  and  gathering  mesh 
of  falsehoods,  its  kindred  with  everything 
that  is  most  opposed  to  all  the  impulses  of 
his  nature,  before  he  becomes  known  to  us. 
It  is  a  bondage  which  he  cannot  break. 
Were  he  even  strong  enough  to  break  it,  his 
loyalty  to  Guinevere  could  not  brook  that 
he  should  be  the  first  to  suggest  such  a 
severance.  He  is  her  slave  to  do  her  will, 
in  that  great  wondering  shame  and  pity 
which  amid  all  his  love  he  has  for  the  woman 
who  has  yielded  to  him.  Never  from  him 
can  the  word  of  parting  come.  His  honor 
is  rooted  in  dishonor,  his  faith  unfaithful  is 
beyond  the  touch  of  change.  He  moves 
about  that  court  where  every  man  suspects 
him  but  Arthur,  his  face  marred  and  his 
spirit  veiled  by  the  shadow  of  his  sin,  in 
everything  but  this  spotless  as  Arthur's 
self,  the  soul  of  knightly  nobleness  and  grace. 
— Blackwood's  Magazine. 

Langeais,  The  Duchess  of,  heroine 
of  Honors  de  Balzac's  novel  of  that 
name.  Montriveau,  a  man  mature 
in  all  save  knowledge  of  the  world 
and  of  women,  is  suddenly  thrown 
into  dangerous  intimacy  with  the 
Duchesse  de  Langeais,  whose  luxuri- 
ous leisure  tempts  her  to  practise  all 
her   arts   of   seduction,    but    whose 


native  coldness  protects  her  against 
the  moral  dangers  of  such  a  pastime. 
Gradually  they  change  places,  the 
Duchess  against  her  will  is  drawn  into 
a  real  love,  but  Montriveau  had 
learned  her  true  character  and  con- 
trives a  terrible  revenge.  The  original 
of  the  character  is  said  to  have  been 
Balzac's  quondam  friend,  The  Duch- 
ess de  Castries. 

Langham,  Edward,  in  Mrs.  Hum- 
phry Ward's  novel,  Robert  Elsmere, 
an  Oxford  tutor  whose  excellent 
qualities  of  head  and  heart  are  neu- 
tralized and  rendered  almost  abortive 
by  morbid  shyness,  introspection  and 
indecision.  Mark  Pattison  (see  Ca- 
saubon)  has  been  suggested  as  the 
original  of  this  character,  but  Mrs. 
Ward  explained  in  a  subsequent 
introduction  that  it  was  drawn  from 
her  conception  of  Amiel,  whose  Jour- 
nal she  had  recently  translated. 

Langham  owes  his  being  entirely  to  the 
fact  that  in  i88s  I  had  published  a  trans- 
lation of  Amiel's  "Journal  Intime."  Some 
of  the  phrases  in  the  description  of  Langham 
are  taken  or  paraphrased  from  the  "Journal 
Intime."  And  yet,  of  course,  Langham  ia 
no  more  Amiel  than  Grey  is  T.  H.  Green  as 
soon  as  he  enters  the  little  world  of  the 
novel. — Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  in  Mc- 
Clure's  Magazine. 

Languish,  Lydia,  in  The  Rivals,  a 
comedy  (1775)  by  Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan,  a  beautiful  heiress,  the 
object  of  the  titular  rivalry  between 
Bob  Acres  and  "  Ensign  Beverley." 
She  is  a  gushing  and  romantic  young 
lady,  full  of  high-flown  fancies  bor- 
rowed from  the  current  heroines  of 
fiction,  and  with  an  unhealthy  imagi- 
nation that  despises  the  robust  com- 
monplace of  life  and  seeks  to  be  wooed 
and  won  in  some  novel  and  startling 
fashion.  Knowing  this,  Captain 
Absolute  assumes  the  name  of  Ensign 
Beverley  in  order  to  court  her  in  the 
manner  she  desires.  With  his  revela- 
tion of  himself  in  his  true  character 
everything  ends  happily. 

Laon,  hero  of  Shelley's  juvenile 
poem,  The  Revolt  of  Islam  (18 17). 
An  enthusiast  for  civil  and  religious 
liberty,  he  inculcates  with  his  own 
principles  the  beautiful  and  high- 
spirited  Cythna,  who  unconvention- 


Lapham 


225 


Lariat 


ally  surrenders  herself  to  him.  0th- 
man  the  tyrant  seizes  Cythna  for 
his  harem,  she  escapes,  finds  Laon 
bound  to  the  stake  and  perishes  with 
him  by  her  own  wish.  The  poem  was 
originally  published  under  the  title 
Laon  and  Cythna,  and  in  this  first 
edition  Shelley  made  hero  and  heroine 
brother  and  sister,  "  not,"  says 
Symonds,  "  because  he  believed  in 
the  desirability  of  incest,  but  because 
he  wished  to  throw  a  glove  down  to 
society  and  to  attack  the  intolerance 
of  custom  in  its  stronghold." 

Lapham,  Irene,  in  The  Rise  of  Silas 
Lapham  (see  below),  daughter  of 
Silas.  Beautiful  and  intelligent,  she 
is  sensitive  about  the  plebeian  ways 
of  her  parents,  but  bears  her  troubles 
in  silence  and  is  equally  undemonstra- 
tive and  self-sacrificing  when  Tom 
Corey  whom  she  loves,  declares  his 
passion  for  her  sister. 

Lapham,  Silas,  the  principal  char- 
acter in  W.  D.  Howells'  novel,  The 
Rise  of  Silas  Lapham  (1885). 

His  big  hairy  fist,  his  ease  in  his 
shirtsleeve,  his  boastful  belief  in 
himself,  his  greed,  his  coarseness,  his 
mixture  of  ignorance  and  shrewdness, 
his  queer  glimmerings  of  sensitiveness 
not  only  to  the  call  of  conscience  but 
to  the  finer  issues  of  honor,  make  him 
a  typical  self-made  American  sprung 
from  obscurity — as  Balzac's  Caesar 
Birotteau  is  a  typical  Frenchman  of 
like  origin.  Each  also  is  a  business 
man  whom  success  floats  to  the  crest 
of  the  wave  only  to  let  him  be  over- 
whelmed by  disaster,  and  each — 
broken,  beaten,  bankrupt — develops 
in  his  feebleness  a  moral  strength  he 
had  not  known  in  his  days  of  power. 

Silas  Lapham  Is  one  of  the  great  triumphs 
of  modern  fiction.  He  is  a  type,  and  yet  he 
is  intensively  individual.  John  T.  Ray- 
mond, who  personated  Colonel  Sellers  all 
over  the  United  States  for  several  seasons, 
once  told  me  that  there  was  scarcely  a  town 
in  which  some  man  did  not  introduce  him- 
self to  the  comedian  as  the  original  of  Sellers, 
saying,  "  Didn't  Mark  ever  tell  you?  Well, 
he  took  Sellers  from  me!"  And  there  Is 
scarcely  a  town  in  New  England  or  in  that 
part  of  the  Middle  West  which  was  settled 
from  New  England  in  which  there  is  not 
more  than  one  man  who  might  claim  to 
be  the  original  of  Silas  Lapham.  Strong, 
gentle,  pushing,  pertinacious,  bragging  un- 


consciously, scrupulous  with  the  scrupu- 
lousness of  the  New  England  conscience, 
provincial,  limited  in  his  ideas,  and  yet  not 
hostile  to  the  light  in  so  far  as  he  can  per- 
ceive it,  Silas  Lapham  is  an  American  type 
which  has  never  before  been  so  boldly  pre- 
sented.— Brander  Matthews:  London SaU- 
urday  Review. 

Laputa,  in  Gulliver's  Travels  (1726), 
a  flying  island  inhabited  by  scientific 
quacks  so  immersed  in  their  own 
thoughts  that  attendants  called  Flap- 
pers were  appointed  to  strike  them 
with  blown  bladders  on  the  mouth 
and  ears  to  bring  them  back  to  a 
realization  of  the  world  around  them. 

Lara,  hero  and  title  of  a  narrative 
poem  by  Lord  Byron  (18 14).  A 
chief,  long  absent  from  his  own  do- 
main, he  returns  unheralded,  accom- 
panied by  a  single  page.  The  mystery 
that  surrounds  him  is  increased  by 
his  proud  isolation,  his  weariness  of 
the  world,  his  scowling  contempt  for 
his  fellow-men,  his  aloofness  from  the 
very  people  with  whom  he  associates. 

Born  of  high  lineage,  linked  in  high  com- 
mand, 
He  mingled  with  the  Magnates  of  his  land; 
Joined  the  carousals  of  the  great  and  gay. 
And  saw  them  smile  or  sigh  their  hours 

away; 
But  still  he  only  saw,  and  did  not  share. 
The  common  pleasure  or  the  general  care. 

At  a  banquet  given  by  his  neighbor, 
Lord  Otho,  a  stern  stranger.  Sir 
Ezzelin,  accuses  him  of  being — what 
or  whom?  The  words  Ezzelin  would 
have  spoken  are  stopped  in  mid  flow. 
A  duel  is  arranged  for — but  Ezzelin 
is  never  seen  again.  Lara  is  subse- 
quently slain  in  heading  a  rebellion. 
His  page  Kaled  turns  out  to  be  a  girl 
in  boy's  clothes,  and  dies  of  a  broken 
heart.  It  is  hinted  that  on  the  eve 
of  the  appointed  duel  with  Ezzelin 
a  peasant  had  witnessed  the  conceal- 
ment of  a  body.  The  reader  is  left 
to  his  own  inferences.  Was  Lara 
none  other  than  Conrad  the  Corsair? 
Was  Kaled,  Gulnare?  Was  it  Lara 
or  Kaled  who  had  gotten  rid  of  Ezze- 
lin? Any  of  these  surmises  will  fit 
the  given  facts. 

Lariat,  The,  in  Mark  Twain's  jocose 
book  of  travels.  Innocents  Abroad,  one 
of  his  feUow  pilgrims  who,  having  a 


Larpent 


226 


Lavinia 


fondness  for  writing  doggrel,  instals 
himself  as  Lariat  (Laureate)  of  the 
journey.  The  portrait  was  drawn 
from  a  real  personage,  Bloodgood  H. 
Cutter  (1817-1900),  a  Long  Island 
farmer  who  pubUshed  some  very  poor 
verses.  Having  inherited  a  fortune 
sufficient  to  gratify  his  passion  for 
travel  he  could  pack  up  and  start  at 
a  moment's  notice.  His  house  at 
Littleneck,  Long  Island,  came  under 
the  hammer  after  his  death  and  re- 
vealed an  eccentric  collection  of 
curios  gathered  by  himself  from  all 
parts  of  the  world. 

Larpent,  Lady  Louisa,  in  Miss 
Bumey's  novel  Evelina,  an  excellent 
specimen  of  the  die-away  lackadaisi- 
cal ladies  of  quality  that  frequented 
the  old  watering  places  of  England. 

Lars,  hero  of  a  narrative  poem, 
Lars,  A  Pastoral  of  Norway,  by 
Bayard  Taylor;  a  Norwegian  peasant. 
Yielding  to  the  custom  of  his  peo- 
ple he  fights  a  duel,  seriously  wounds 
his  adversary  and,  thinking  he  has 
killed  him,  flees  to  Pennsylvania, 
where  he  adopts  the  Quaker  faith. 
Years  after  he  returns  to  Norway  to 
destroy  the  tyrannous  custom  of  the 
duello. 

Lasca,  hero  and  title  of  a  poem  of 
the  great  American  west,  by  Frank 
Desprez. 

Last,  Dr.,  a  character  in  Foote's 
satirical  play,  The  Devil  on  Two  Sticks ^ 
originally  acted  with  great  success  by 
Weston.  Long  after  the  play  itself, 
as  a  complete  work,  had  vanished 
from  the  stage  the  scenes  in  which  Dr. 
Last  appears  lingered  as  a  farcical 
interlude.  The  name  and  the  char- 
acter were  borrowed  by  Isaac  Bicker- 
staffe  in  Dr.  Last  in  his  Chariot 
(1769),  an  adaptation  of  Moli^re's 
Le  Malade  Imaginaire. 

Latimer,  Darsie,  hero  of  Scott's 
novel,  Redgauntlet  (1824),  supposed 
to  be  the  son  of  Ralph  Latimer,  but 
eventually  discovered  to  be  Sir  Arthur 
Darsie  Redgauntlet,  heir  to  the 
family  estates. 

Launce,  in  The  Two  Gentlemen  of 
Verona  (1592),  a  clownish  servant  to 
Proteus,  much  addicted  to  puns  and 
conceits.  ^- 


Launce,  accompanied  by  his  immortal 
dog,  leads  the  train  of  Shakespeare's  humor- 
ous clowns:  his  rich,  grotesque  humanity 
Is  worth  all  the  bright  fantastic  interludes 
of  Boyet  and  Adriano,  Costard  and  Holo- 
fernes,  worth  all  the  dancing  doggrel  or 
broad-witted  prose  of  either  Dromio. — 
E.  Dowden:    Shakespeare  Primer. 

Laura,  heroine  of  Byron's  poem, 
Beppo. 

Laurence,  Friar,  in  Shakespeare's 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  a  Franciscan  friar 
who  marries  the  lovers  (ii,  6)  and 
gives  Juliet  a  sleeping  potion  (iv,  i.) 

The  reverend  character  of  the  friar,  like 
all  Shakespeare's  representations  of  the 
great  professions,  is  very  delightful  and 
tranquillizing,  yet  it  is  no  digression  but 
immediately  necessary  to  the  carrying  out 
of  the  plot. — Coleridge. 

Laurie,  Annie,  heroine  of  the  fa- 
mous Scotch  song  by  William  Doug- 
lass (written  about  1705),  was  a  real 
character,  the  eldest  daughter  of  Sir 
Robert  Laurie.  The  poet  wrote  the 
words  of  this  song  during  the  progress 
of  his  courtship  which  was  unsuc- 
cessful, for  Annie  married  James  Fer- 
gusson  of  Craigdarrock  in  1709  and 
became  the  mother  of  Alexander  Fer- 
gusson,  the  hero  of  Burns'  poem. 
The  Whistle.  Douglass  himsefi  was 
the  hero  of  a  popular  song,  Willie 
was  a  Wanton  Wag. 

The  air  that  now  accompanies  the 
words  of  Annie  Laurie  is  of  compara- 
tively recent  origin.  It  was  composed 
by  Lady  John  Scott.  A  touching 
incident  in  connection  with  the  song 
is  told  in  Bayard  Taylor's,  An  Inci- 
dent in  the  Camp. 

Lavengro,  hero  of  George  Borrow 's 
semi-fictitious  autobiography,  Laven- 
gro the  Scholar,  the  Gipsy,  the  Priest 
(1851),  and  its  sequel  The  Romany 
Rye  (1857).  The  two  books  describe 
Borrow's  wanderings  over  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  his  strange  ad- 
ventures, literary  struggles  in  London, 
vagrancy  with  gypsies,  etc.,  all  with 
a  veil  of  mystery  purposely  thrown 
over  them  so  as  to  blend  romance  and 
realism  in  an  enchanting  fashion. 

Lavinia,  heroine  of  an  episode  in 
Thomson's  Seasons,  Autumn  (1730)- 
She  is  the  daughter  of  Acasto,  to 
whom  Palemon,  a  young  squire,  owes 


Lavinia 


227 


Leatherstocking 


his  fortune.  Acasto,  dying,  leaves 
Lavinia  and  her  mother  destitute; 
she  comes  among  the  gleaners  in 
Acasto 's  fields,  he  sees  her  and  falls 
in  love  with  her,  but  fights  against 
the  prospect  of  a  mesalliance,  until 
he  discovers  that  she  is  the  daughter 
of  his  old  friend  and  patron,  when  he 
proposes  and  is  accepted.  The  story 
is  evidently  inspired  by  the  old  Testa- 
ment story  of  Ruth. 

Lavinia,  in  Shakespeare's  Titus 
Andronictis,  daughter  of  Titus,  be- 
comes the  wife  of  Bassanius,  is  dis- 
honored and  mutilated  by  the  Goths 
(ii,  3.  5)  and  is  lolled  by  her  father 
(v,  3). 

Lawrence,  Lazy,  hero  of  one  of  Miss 
Edge  worth's  stories  in  Parent's  Assist- 
ant who  is  adequately  described  by 
this  nickname.  Probably  the  author 
had  in  mind  a  popular  chapbook  en- 
titled The  Infamous  History  of  Sir 
Lawrence  Lazie,  the  hero  of  which 
was  arraigned  under  the  laws  of 
Lubberland  for  having  served  the 
Schoolmaster,  his  Wife,  the  Squire's 
Cook  and  the  Farmer.  Sir  Lawrence 
successfully  explained  away  the  trea- 
sons laid  to  his  charge. 

Lawson,  Sam,  a  shrewd,  illiterate, 
shiftless,  humorous  Yankee  villager, 
the  supposed  narrator  of  the  stories 
collected  in  Old  Town  Folks  (1869)  by 
Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe.  With 
all  his  worthlessness  he  has  amusing 
streaks  of  God-fearing  piety  and  law- 
abiding  reverence  for  magistrates  and 
dignities. 

Leandre.  Three  of  Moli^re's  char- 
acters bear  this  name — the  rival  of 
L^he  in  U  Etourdi,  the  son  of  Geronte 
in  Les  Fourberies  deScapin,  and  the 
lover  of  Lucinde  in  Le  Medecin 
ifalgrS  Lui. 

Lear,  Lir,  or  Lier,  a  mythical  king 
of  Britain,  especially  notable  in  litera- 
ture as  the  hero  of  Shakespeare's 
tragedy,  King  Lear  (written  1605, 
printed  1608).  The  success  of  Shake- 
speare's play  prompted  the  publica- 
tion of  the  older  play  on  which  it  was 
founded,  ^  doubtless  with  the  hope 
that  it  might  be  passed  off  for  Shake- 
speare's. The  title  page  ran:  The 
True  Chronicle  History  of  King  Leir 


and  his  three  Daughters,  etc.,  as  it 
has  been  divers  and  sundry  times 
lately  acted.  Its  last  appearance  on 
the  stage  had  been  in  1594.  This 
play  is  not  a  tragedy;  it  ends  happily 
in  accordance  with  the  original 
legend  wherein  CorneL'a  defeats  her 
sisters  and  reinstates  her  father  on 
the  throne.  The  germ  of  the  story 
appears  in  the  Gesta  Romanorum,  the 
hero  being  a  Roman  emperor.  It 
was  first  transferred  to  the  mythical 
British  king  by  Geoffrey  of  Mon- 
mouth in  his  Chronicle.  Thence  it 
passed  into  various  lamentable  bal- 
lads describing  the  death  of  IGng 
Leyr  and  his  Three  Daughters  of 
which  the  catastrophe  probably  sug- 
gested to  Shakespeare  his  own  tragic 
conclusion. 

Learoyd,  a  Yorkshire  private  in  an 
Indian  regiment,  the  companion  of 
Mulvaney  and  Ortheris,  in  Soldiers 
Three  and  other  tales  and  sketches 
by  Rudyard  Kipling. 

Of  these  three  strongly  contrasted  types 
the  first  and  the  third  live  in  Mr.  Kipling's 
pages  with  absolute  reality.  I  must  confess 
that  Learoyd  is  to  me  a  little  shadowy. 
.  .  .  It  seems  as  though  Mr.  Kipling 
required,  for  the  artistic  balance  of  his  cycle 
of  stories,  a  third  figure,  and  had  evolved 
Learoyd  while  he  observed  and  created 
Mulvaney  and  Ortheris,  nor  am  I  sure  that 
places  could  not  be  pointed  out  where 
Learoyd,  save  for  the  dialect,  melts  undis- 
tinguishably  into  an  incarnation  of  Mul- 
vaney.— Edmund  Gosse:    The  Century. 

Leatherstocking,  the  nickname 
under  which  Natty  Bumppo  (q.v.) 
appears  in  Cooper's  novels.  The 
Pioneers  and  The  Prairie.  He  has 
other  nicknames  in  other  books  of  the 
series,  but  as  this  represents  him  in 
his  maturity  and  age  it  has  become 
most  closely  identified  with  him. 
Hence  the  five  novels  are  known  to 
the  public  and  to  the  book  trade  as 
the  Leatherstocking  Series. 

Leatherstocking  Is  indeed  a  most  mem- 
orable and  heroic  yet  pathetic  figure,  as 
living  and  impressive  almost  as  any  we 
know,  and  we  should  be  sorry  to  believe 
that  the  world  will  ever  willingly  let  die  the 
delightful  books  which  tell  of  his  battles, 
his  friendships,  his  unhappy  love,  his  integ- 
rity and  grand  simplicity  of  character,  his 
ungrudging  sacrifices  for  others,  his  touching 
isolation  and  his  death  on  the  lonely  prairie. 
American  fiction  has  no  other  such  charac- 
U  :. — London  Spectator. 


Leeks 


228 


Legeia 


LeckSy  Mrs.,  one  of  the  heroines  of 
Frank  R.  Stockton's  mock  serious 
extravaganza,  The  Casting  Away  of 
Mrs,  Leeks  and  Mrs.  Aleshine  (1886). 
Two  elderly  New  England  ladies,  in  a 
wreck  which  they  had  discounted  in 
advance,  are  thrown  into  the  sea  and 
floated  there  for  some  days  on  life- 
preservers.  Their  housewifely  pre- 
science had  provided  them  with  all 
the  necessaries  and  some  of  the  lux- 
uries suitable  for  the  emergency. 
From  their  pockets  they  produced 
Westphalian  sausages,  carefully 
canned  and  bread  hermetically  sealed 
and  ship  biscuit  and  a  bottle  of 
whiskey,  without  which  Mrs.  Leeks 
declared  that  she  never  travelled — 
not  to  mention  the  fact  that  both 
ladies  had  put  on  black  stockings 
having  heard  that  sharks  never 
snapped  at  colored  people. 

Lecoq,  Monsieur,  a  detective  who 
figures  brilliantly  in  Gaboriau's  novel 
of  that  name  and  its  sequel,  The 
Honor  of  the  Name. 

Sherlock  Holmes  might  have  taught 
Lecoq  many  little  dodges,  but  Lecoq  was 
by  far  the  greater  intellect — an  intellect 
that  moved  in  larger  curves  on  a  higher 
plane,  for  in  the  sequel  especially  he  had  to 
unravel  the  threads  of  a  vast  and  compli- 
cated politico-social  intrigue  rooted  in  the 
national  life  of  France. — Saturday  Review. 

Lecouvreur,  Adrienne,  a  famous 
French  actress  (1690- 1760),  whose 
house  in  Paris  became  the  resort  of 
the  best  society  including  the  ladies 
of  the  court.  She  not  only  succeeded 
in  raising  her  profession,  hitherto 
scorned,  to  something  like  esteem, 
but  she  revolutionized  the  mannerism 
and  artificiality  of  the  contemporane- 
ous stage  and  introduced  the  natural 
and  unaffected  delivery  ever  since 
cultivated  by  her  successors.  Eugene 
Scribe  and  Legouv^  made  her  the 
heroine  of  a  tragedy,  Adrienne  Le- 
couvrier  (1849),  which  was  adapted 
by  Fanny  Davenport  in  Adrienne  the 
Actress  (1853).  The  story  turns  upon 
the  ^  love  of  Maurice  de  Saxe  for 
Adrienne,  who  at  first  knows  him  only 
as  an  officer  without  fame  or  rank, 
whom  she  loves  for  himself  alone. 
She  has  a  terrible  rival  in  the  Prin- 
cesse  de  Bouillon,  a  woman  who  stops 


at  nothing  to  gain  her  own  ends,  and 
who  finally  poisons  Adrienne  by 
means  of  a  bouquet,  which  is  made  to 
appear  a  present  from  Maurice  de 
Saxe.  The  dramatists  make  her  a 
passionate,  loving,  worthy  woman, 
on  whom  the  artificial  life  of  the  stage 
has  exercised  no  perceptible  influence, 
capable  under  the  influence  of  jeal- 
ousy of  forgetting  for  a  while  most 
self-imposed  restraints,  but  incapable 
of  any  action  that  is  not  defensible 
from  the  code  of  feminine  morality 
which  is  accepted  by  the  majority  of 
women,  or  that  springs  from  any 
degrading  motive. 

Lee,  Aimabel,  subject  of  a  lyric  of 
that  name  by  E.  A.  Poe,  in  which  he 
celebrates  his  love  for  his  childwife 
Virginia  Clemm  and  his  despair  over 
her  early  death.  The  poem  originally 
appeared  in  the  New  York  Tribune  on 
October  9,  1849,  two  days  after  Poe's 
death.  In  185 1  Poe's  friend,  Thomas 
H.  Chivers  of  Georgia  (1807-1858), 
published  a  collection  of  poems, 
Eonchs  of  Ruby,  in  which  appears  a 
poem  called  Rosalie  Lee,  that  has  a 
far-off  resemblance  to  Poe's  lyric.  It 
is  impossible  to  say  which  was  written 
first. 

Lee,  Simon,  hero  and  title  of  a 
poem  by  Wordsworth.  The  poet  sees 
old  Simon  Lee  at  work  on  the  root 
of  an  old  tree,  and  helps  him  to  get 
over  a  difficulty.  The  old  man  thanks 
him.  The  incident  suggests  nearly  a 
hundred  lines,  the  whole  history  of 
Simon  being  sketched,  and  the  sorrow 
of  bleak  age  shown  stealing  over  the 
brightness  of  youth  and  the  power  of 
manhood. 

Le  Fevre,  a  poor  lieutenant  whose 
death  is  related  in  The  Story  of  Le 
Fevre,  an  episode  in  Sterne's  novel, 
The  Life  and  Opinions  of  Tristram 
Shandy. 

Legeia,  heroine  and  title  of  a  short 
story  by  E.  A.  Poe. 

Legeia,  the  devoted  wife  of  the 
narrator  of  the  story,  holds  the  theory 
which  was  a  favorite  with  Bulwer, 
that  will  ought  to  be  able  to  conquer 
death.  She,  however,  dies  of  con- 
sumption but  apparently  haunts  her 
successor,  the  second  wife,  till  the 


Legend 


229 


Leila 


latter  dies  of  the  mere  oppression  on 
her  spirits.  Then  by  a  vast  spiritual 
effort,  the  tentatives  of  which  are 
attended  with  ghastly  physical  effects, 
Legeia  enters  the  dead  body  of  her 
rival  and  for  one  brief  moment  brings 
back  the  exhausted  organism  to  life 
in  her  Own  person.  Legeia  was  a 
favorite  name  with  Poe.  He  had 
already  used  it  in  his  juvenile  poem, 
Al  Aaraf: 

Legeia,  Legeia, 

My  beautiful  one. 
Whose  lightest  idea 

Will  to  melody  run. 

See  LiGEA. 

Legend,  Benjamin,  known  famil- 
iarly as  Ben  without  prefix  or  aflSx, 
in  Congreve's  Love  for  Love  (1695), 
the  prodigal  son  of  Sir  Sampson 
Legend,  who  runs  away  to  sea  and 
becomes  a  common  sailor,  kindly  at 
heart  but  rough  in  exterior,  full  of 
picturesque  sea-slang  and  harmless 
oaths  like  **  Mess!  "  This  was  Ban- 
nister's favorite  character. 

What  is  Ben — the  pleasant  sailor  which 
Bannister  gives  us — but  a  piece  of  satire 
...  a  dreamy  combination  of  all  the  acci- 
dents of  a  sailor's  character,  his  contempt 
of  money,  his  credulity  to  women,  with  that 
necessary  estrangement  from  home?  .  .  . 
We  never  think  the  worse  of  Ben  for  it,  or 
feel  it  as  a  stain  upon  his  character. — C. 
Lamb. 

Legend,  Valentine,  hero  of  Con- 
greve's comedy  Love  for  Love  (1695), 
a  young  Cambridge  man,  a  lover  of 
the  classics  and  eke  of  pleasure,  who, 
partly  out  of  pique  because  Angelica, 
the  beautiful  heiress,  will  not  marry 
him,  has  wasted  all  his  fortune  and 
is  reduced  to  the  husks  of  the  prodigal 
son. 

Legree,  Simon,  in  Mrs.  Stowe's 
novel.  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  (1853),  a 
slave  dealer  and  slave-driver  brutal- 
ized to  callousness  by  the  exigencies 
of  his  trade.  Though  he  dies  a  har- 
rowing death  in  this  novel,  Thomas 
Dixon  resuscitates  him  in  The  Leop- 
ard's Spots  and  "  reconstructs  "  him 
as  a  Republican  leader  under  the 
carpet-bag  regime. 

Leicester,  Robert  Dudley,  Earl  of, 
a  historical  character  (1532- 1588), 
who   forfeited   the   love    of    Queen 


Elizabeth  by  his  marriage  to  Amy 
Robsart  (q.v.).  He  is  the  hero  of 
Scott's  romance,  Kenilworth. 

Leigh,  Sir  Amyas,  hero  of  Charles 
Kingsley's  historical  romance,  West- 
ward Hoi  or  the  Voyages  and  Adven- 
tures of  Sir  Amyas  Leigh  in  the  Reign 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  (1855).  He  is  a 
trifle  over-muscular  but  he  is  also  a 
man  endowed  with  strong  poetic 
feelings,  a  keen  sensibility  to  all 
beauty  of  art  and  nature  and  an  ami- 
ability that  is  only  disturbed  when 
he  meets  or  when  he  merely  thinks 
of  the  Spaniards  whom  it  is  his  object 
in  life  to  drive  off  the  face  of  the 
earth — and  the  sea. 

The  gigantic  Amyas  Leigh  was  the  legit- 
imate parent  of  a  lusty  progeny,  which  has 
become  a  considerable  nuisance  in  these 
latter  days.  He  was,  for  example,  the  un- 
doubted ancestor  of  Guy  Livingstone  and 
a  host  of  huge  blundering  male  animals 
of  the  heavy  dragoon  species,  with  a  "most 
plentiful  lack  of  discretion,"  and  a  terrible 
superfluity  of  muscular  development. 
.  .  .  And  thus  Mr.  Kingsley's  dislike  for 
the  excesses  of  asceticism  or  sentimentalism, 
and  generally  for  a  stunted  and  one-sided 
development  of  human  nature,  was  easily 
pressed  into  the  service  of  people  who  were 
anxious  to  develop  the  inferior  instincts  at 
the  expense  of  the  superior.  Moreover, 
there  is  no  more  annoying  form  of  affecta- 
tion than  the  affectation  of  simplicity;  and 
Mr.  Kingsley's  frequent  denunciations  of 
morbid  self-consciousness  made  some  of  his 
disciples  too  obtrusively  and  demonstra- 
tively unconscious  of  themselves.  It  is  hard 
to  be  fair  to  him  when  we  are  suffering  from 
the  excess  of  the  qualities  which  he  admired. 
And  yet  we  must  admit  that,  when  the  bal- 
ance is  rightly  struck,  there  is  really  some- 
thing to  be  said  for  the  genuine  Amyas 
Leighs.  Manliness  and  simplicity  are  after 
all  good  qualities,  thought  the  factitious 
imitations  of  them  are  detestable.  And  in 
Mr.  Kingsley's  pages  they  were  certainly 
not  intended  to  imply  any  predominance  of 
merely  physical  excellence. — Saturday  Re- 
view, January  30,  1875. 

Leigh,  Aurora,  heroine  of  a  narrative 
poem  of  that  name  (1856)  by  Mrs.  E. 
B .  Browning.  The  brilliant  daughter 
of  an  Englishman  by  an  Italian  mother, 
she  is  orphaned  at  an  early  age,  is 
disinherited  by  her  father's  will  and 
after  many  vicissitudes  marries  Rom- 
ney  Leigh,  the  high-minded  cousin 
who  had  involuntarily  supplanted  her 
in  the  possession  of  the  family  estate. 

Leila,  in  Byron's  narrative  poem, 
The    Giaour    (18 13),    the    beautiful 


Lelia 


230 


Leporello 


slave  of  the  Caliph  Hassan,  who  falls 
in  love  with  the  titular  hero,  escapes 
from  the  seraglio,  is  overtaken  and 
cast  into  the  sea.  Another  Leila 
appears  in  Byron's  Don  Juan  (Canto 
viii).  A  Turkish  child,  Juan  rescues 
her  at  the  siege  of  Ismail  and  takes 
her  first  to  St.  Petersburg  and  then 
to  London,  where  the  adventures  of 
both  come  to  an  abrupt  close. 

Lelia,  heroine  of  a  romance,  Lelia 
(1833),  by  George  Sand,  a  beautiful 
woman  who  having  been  once  de- 
ceived has  foresworn  love  and  laughs 
at  men.  She  plays  a  cruel  joke  upon 
Stenio  {q.v.)  by  substituting  for  her- 
self in  a  pretended  assignation  her 
own  sister  Pulcherie  {q_.v.),  a  courtesan 
who  is  her  physical  double.  She 
turns  a  deaf  ear  to  all  the  advances  of 
Magnus,  a  priest  whose  faith  cannot 
cure  him  of  his  passion  for  her.  Stenio 
ends  by  committing  suicide.  Magnus, 
driven  mad  by  the  austerities  he  has 
imposed  upon  himself,  slays  Lelia. 

Lelie,  the  titular  "  blunderer  "in 
Moliere's  comedy  V  Etourdi,  which 
is  imitated  from  Nicolo  Barbieri's 
V Inawertito  and  has  in  turn  been 
imitated  by  Dryden  in  Sir  Martin 
Marall,  by  Mrs.  Centlivre  in  Marplot, 
and  others.  Lelie  is  a  conceited  and 
scatterbrained  youngster  whose  capa- 
city for  blundering  confounds  all  the 
schemes  devised  by  his  ingenious  and 
unscrupulous  valet  to  secure  the  per- 
son of  the  slave  girl  Cl^lie.  Masca- 
rille  (q.v.)  cajoles,  lies,  and  thieves 
with  indefatigable  perseverance  and 
marvellous  adroitness;  but  each  new 
plan  is  foiled,  almost  in  its  inception, 
by  the  stupidity  of  the  marplot  in 
whose  behalf  he  labors. 

Lenore,  heroine  of  a  lyric  poem  of 
that  name  by  Edgar  A.  Poe,  and,  in 
the  same  poet's  Raven,  the  name  of 
the  "  rare  and  radiant  maiden  " 
whose  death  has  plunged  the  hero 
into  gloom. 

Lenore,  heroine  of  a  German  ballad 
of  that  name  by  Gottfried  August 
Burger,  which  has  been  translated  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  D.  G.  Rosetti  and 
many  others  of  less  note.  Her  lover 
dies  and  she  blasphemously  cries  for 
him  to  come  to  her,  he  appears  at 


night  in  ghostly  form,  places  her 
behind  him  on  his  spectral  steed  and 
rides  madly  to  the  graveyard  where 
their  marriage  is  celebrated  by  a  crew 
of  howling  goblins.  In  one  form  or 
other  the  story  is  common  to  most 
European  nations.  Burger  confesses 
his  obligations  to  an  old  Dutch 
ballad.    See  also  Alonzo  the  Brave. 

Leonato,  in  Shakespeare's  Much 
Ado  about  Nothing  (1600),  governor 
of  Messina  and  father  of  Hero. 
Merry,  light-hearted  and  indulgent, 
he  is  weakly  credulous  when  scandal 
assails  his  daughter. 

Leoni,  Leone,  the  titular  hero  of  a 
romance  by  George  Sand  (1835),  an 
infamous  young  seigneur,  a  swindler 
and  a  libertine,  with  a  special  pen- 
chant for  the  women  of  the  pavement. 
He  yet  succeeds  in  inspiring  Juliette, 
who  tells  the  story,  with  a  passion 
that  sweeps  away  all  scruples  and  tri- 
umphs over  all  revolts  of  conscience. 

The  subject  of  the  story  is  the  sufferings 
of  an  infatuated  young  girl  who  follows  over 
Europe  the  most  faithless,  unscrupulous 
and  ignoble,  but  also  the  most  irresistible 
of  charmers.  It  is  Manon  Lescaut  with  the 
inconceivable  fickleness  of  Manon  attributed 
to  a  man,  and  as  in  the  Abb6  Pr6vost's  story 
the  touching  element  is  the  devotion  and 
constancy  of  the  injured  and  deluded  Des- 
grieux,  so  in  Leone  Leoni  we  are  invited  to 
feel  for  the  too  closely-clinging  Juliette  who 
is  dragged  through  the  mire  of  a  passion 
which  she  curses  and  yet  which  survives 
unnamable  outrage. — H.  James. 

Leontes,  King  of  Sicilia  in  Shake- 
speare's A  Winter's  Tale,  the  husband 
of  Hermione,  whom  he  unjustly  sus- 
pects of  infidelity  and  casts  away 
from  him. 

Besides  the  ripe  comedy,  characteristic 
of  Shakespeare  at  his  latest  .  .  .  there 
is  also  a  harsh  exhibition  in  Leontes  of  the 
meanest  of  the  passions,  an  insane  jealousy, 
petty  and  violent  as  the  man  who  nurses  it. 
For  sheer  realism,  for  absolute  insight  into 
the  most  cobwebbed  corners  of  our  nature, 
Shakespeare  has  rarely  surpassed  this  brief 
study  which  in  its  total  effect  does  but  throw 
out  in  brighter  relief  the  noble  qualities  of 
the  other  actors  beside  him ,  the  pleasant  qual- 
ities of  the  play  they  make  by  their  acting. — 
Arthur  Symons:  Henry  Irving  Shake- 
speare, vol.  II,  p.  320. 

Leporello,  in  Mozart's  opera  of  Don 
Giovanni  (1787),  usurps  the  place  of 
Sganarelle  as  valet  to  Don  Juan.   The 


Lerouge 


231 


Lesurques 


name  is  first  heard  of  on  the  mimic 
stage  in  Shad  well's  drama  of  The 
Libertine  (1676). 

Lerouge,  Claudine,  the  corpus 
delicti  in  Emile  Gaboriau's  detective 
novel  V  Affaire  Lerouge.  A  woman 
of  worthless  character,  she  has  been 
the  nurse  of  an  illegitimate  son  of  the 
Count  of  Commarin  by  a  mistress 
whom  he  adored.  The  Count  bribes 
her  to  substitute  the  infant  for  his 
legitimate  heir  by  a  wife  he  dislikes. 
She  was  baffled  by  her  husband,  an 
honest  suitor,  but  the  Count  thinks 
the  substitution  has  been  effected. 
The  bastard,  when  he  grows  up,  plots 
to  assert  his  pretended  rights  and 
first  finds  it  necessary  to  rid  himself 
of  the  former  nurse.  Hence  the 
murder  of  Claudine  Lerouge,  which 
needs  all  the  detective  skill  of  Lecoq 
to  unravel. 

Lescaut,  Manon,  titular  heroine  of 
a^novel  by  the  Abb6  Antoine  Prevost, 
a  female  profligate  of  winning  grace 
and  beauty  and  perennial  gayety  and 
good  himior.  Des  Grieux,  a  young- 
ster at  college,  sacrifices  brilliant 
prospects  to  elope  with  her.  Although 
strongly  attached  to  him  she  is  vain, 
reckless,  luxurious.  To  provide  for 
her  wants  she  descends  to  the  most 
disgraceful  expedients,  while  he  be- 
comes a  gamester  and  a  cheat  and 
assists  Manon  in  extorting  money 
from  her  base  admirers.  Finally  an 
ill-concerted  fraud  throws  Manon 
into  the  clutches  of  the  law.  She  is 
convicted  and  transported  to  New 
Orleans.  Her  lover  follows  her  de- 
spite all  the  efforts  of  his  family  and 
friends.  In  the  new  world  they  reform 
and  give  a  striking  example  of  con- 
stancy and  devotion  until  Manon 's 
death.   See  Des  Grieux,  Chevalier. 

The  amiable  chevalier  Des  Grieux  and 
the  seductive  Manon  meet  by  accident,  fall 
mutually  in  love  and  abandon  their  families 
to  elope  together,  never  thinking  there  is 
ought  else  but  love.  Falling  soon  into  pov- 
erty, one  makes  a  commerce  of  her  charms, 
the  other  learns  to  cheat  at  cards.  How  do 
these  two  characters  inspire  such  lively 
interest,  carried  at  last  to  the  highest  degree? 
It  is  because  there  is,  here,  passion  and 
truth;  because  this  woman,  always  faithful 
to  Des  Grieux  even  in  betraying  him,  who 
loves  nothing  better  than  him,  who  mingles 
so  great  a  charm  with  her  infidelities,  whose 


voluptuous  imagination,  whose  graces, 
whose  gaiety  have  taken  so  strong  a  hold 
upon  her  lover — because  such  a  woman  is  as 
seductive  in  fiction  as  in  fact.  The  enchant- 
ment that  surrounds  her  by  the  author's  art 
never  leaves  her  even  in  the  cart  that  carries 
her  to  the  hospital. — La  Rousse:  Grand 
Dictionaire  Universelle. 

Lesley,  Bonnie,  in  Robert  Bums's 
song  of  that  name,  was  in  real  life 
Miss  Leslie  Baillie,  one  of  the  two 
daughters  of  an  Ayrshire  gentleman. 
Father  and  daughters  called  upon  the 
poet  at  Dumfries  when  on  their  way 
to  England.  Bums  moimted  his 
horse,  rode  with  the  travellers  for 
fifteen  miles  and  composed  the  song 
on  his  return  home.  William  Black, 
in  his  novel  Kilmeny,  makes  Bonnie 
Leslie  the  pet  name  of  his  heroine. 

Lestrange,  Nelly,  the  autobio- 
graphical heroine  of  Rhoda  Brough- 
ton's  novel,  Cometh  up  as  a  Flower 
(1868). 

She  smells  neither  of  bread  and  butter 
nor  of  the  stables,  two  almost  equally  odor- 
ous extremes  between  which  the  heroines 
of  most  English  novels  vibrate,  and  is  at  the 
widest  removed  from  the  metaphysical  and 
strong-minded  nondescripts  affected  by  our 
writers.  She  is  merely  a  very  genuine  little 
girl,  innocent,  passionate  and  with  a  genius 
for  loving,  the  story  of  whose  love  and 
troubles  is  told  with  a  simplicity  and  truth 
to  nature  which  we  think  quite  exceptional. 
—N.  Y.  Nation. 

Lesurques,  Joseph,  the  hero  of  a 
drama,  Le  Courrier  de  Lyon,  1850 
{The  Lyons  Mail  incorrectly  trans- 
lated by  Charles  Reade,  1854,  as  The 
Courier  of  Lyons)  fotmded  on  fact  by 
Eugene  Moreau,  in  collaboration  with 
Sirandan  and  Delacour.  Even  the 
real  names  of  the  leading  characters 
are  retained.  On  April  27,  1796,  the 
Lyons  mail  coach  was  attacked  be- 
tween Melun  and  Lieussant  by  rob- 
bers who  shot  postilion  and  courier. 
Five  years  later,  Dubosc,  the  leader 
of  the  gang,  was  guillotined.  In  the 
interim  the  innocent  Lesurques  had 
been  convicted  and  executed  on  cir- 
cumstantial evidence,  which  included 
an  extraordinary  resemblance  to  the 
murderer.  The  French  drama  inex- 
orably follows  every  tragic  detail. 
The  English  version  alters  the  catas- 
trophe ;  Lesurques  is  saved  at  the  last 
moment  and  Dubosc  is  sent  to  the 


Levi 


232 


Ligea 


gallows.  The  play  has  always  been  a 
favorite  on  the  French  stage  because 
it  affords  excellent  opportunity  to  a 
versatile  and  melodramatic  actor  who 
assumes  the  double  part  of  the  crimi- 
nal Dubosc  and  the  upright,  courage- 
ous Lesurques. 

Levi,  Isaac,  in  Charles  Reade's 
novel,  //  is  Never  too  Late  to  Mend 
(1856),  a  representative  of  the  better 
class  of  Jews  who  had  hitherto  been 
scurvily  treated  in  English  fiction. 
From  the  Jew  that  Shakespeare  drew 
to  those  of  Thackeray  and  Dickens 
none  wins  our  cordial  sjrmpathy. 
Disraeli  sought  to  make  a  change, 
but  his  gorgeous  Sidonia  is  too  ideal- 
istic for  everyday  wear.  Levi  himself 
is  somewhat  theatrical,  but  he  is  wise, 
charitable,  kindly — the  instrument 
by  which  wrong-doers  are  punished 
and  the  good  vindicated.  Love  for 
home  and  for  his  dead  wife  exalts  him, 
and  there  is  something  even  nobler 
when  he  turns  to  his  reviler,  and, 
disclaiming  all  intention  to  threaten, 
says  solemnly:  "  Be  advised  then. 
Do  not  trample  upon  one  of  my 
people.  Nations  and  men  that  op- 
press us  do  not  thrive."  See  Har- 
rington. 

Levine,  Constantine  Dmitrich,  in 
Lyof  Tolstoy's  novel  of  Anna  Kare- 
nina,  a  character  in  which  many 
traits  are  drawn  from  the  author's 
own  character  and  history. 

By  birth  and  wealth  Levine  belongs  to 
the  world  of  great  people,  but  he  is  not  a 
man  of  the  world.  He  has  read  much  and 
thought  more;  he  would  fain  better  the  con- 
dition of  his  retainers;  he  is  interested  In 
schools  and  agriculture.  But  he  is  shy, 
suspicious,  touchy,  impracticable  and  quite 
out  of  his  element  in  the  gay  world  of  Mos- 
cow. In  Levine's  religious  experiences 
Tolstoi  was  relating  his  own. — Matthew 
Arnold:     Essays  in  Criticism,  2nd  Series. 

Lewis,  in  Charles  Kingsley's  dra- 
matic poem  of  The  Saint's  Tragedy, 
Landgrave  of  Thuringia,  and  husband 
of  Elizabeth.  He  is  intended  as  a 
type  of  the  husbands  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  of  the  woman-worship  of 
chivalry. 

Liberty  Hall,  a  place  where  every 
one  may  do  as  he  chooses.  The  term 
first  occurs  in  Goldsmith's  comedy, 


She  Stoops  to  Conquer  Act  i,  Sc.  2 
(i773)«  Young  Marlow  and  Hastings 
mistake  Squire  Hardcastle's  house  for 
an  inn  and  disport  themselves  ac- 
cordingly. The  squire,  though  taken 
aback,  determines  to  enter  into  the 
spirit  of  his  guests  and  assures  them: 
"  This  is  Liberty  Hall,  gentlemen; 
you  may  do  just  as  you  please  here." 

Licentiate  of  Glass,  hero  and  title 
of  a  tale  by  Cervantes,  a  scholar  and 
a  gentleman  who  never  succeeds  in 
life  until  he  goes  mad  and  attracts  the 
attention  of  the  great  by  his  dis- 
orderly wit.  Unfortunately  he  gets 
cured  and  is  compelled  to  leave  the 
court. 

Lieschen,  in  Carlyle's  Sartor  Re- 
sartus,  bed-maker  and  stove-lighter, 
washer  and  wringer,  cook,  errand- 
maid,  and  general  provider  to  Profes- 
sor Teufelsdrockh. 

Life-in-Death,  in  Coleridge's  eerie 
poem.  The  Ancient  Mariner,  a  spectre 
who  throws  dice  with  Death  for  the 
shipwrecked  crew.  Death,  it  would 
appear,  wins  the  first  throw  or  throws 
and  has  seized  upon  all  the  comrades 
of  the  hero,  but  Life-in-Death  wins 
the  final  cast  for  the  Mariner  himself. 
He  is  reserved,  in  other  words,  for  a 
living  death.  The  spectre  is  thus 
described: 

Her  lips  were  red,  her  looks  were  free. 

Her  locks  were  yellow  as  gold: 
Her  skin  was  as  white  as  leprosy. 
The  Night-mare  Life-in-Death  was  she 
Who  thicks  man's  blood  with  cold. 
Part  III,  1.  190. 

It  Is  difficult  to  reconcile  the  description 
of  Life-in-Death  with  the  subsequent  ad- 
ventures of  the  Mariner.  She  is  apparently 
a  personification  of  lawless  pleasure,  and 
has  a  bold  and  evil  beauty.  Apart  from  the 
sequence  it  would  seem  as  though  the  text, 
"She  that  liveth  in  pleasure  is  dead  while 
she  liveth"  (i  Timothy  v,  6),  had  been  in 
the  poet's  mind.  Perhaps  Coleridge  wished 
to  bring  her  before  us  as  a  general  embodi- 
ment of  one  dead  in  sin,  without  regard 
to  her  particular  part  in  the  poem. — Henry 
S.  Pancoast:  Standard  English  Poems 
(1899),  Notes,  p.  687. 

Ligea,  a  water  nymph  inhabiting 
the  river  Severn;  celebrated  by  Milton 
in  the  song  Sabrina  Fair  in  Comus: 

And  fair  Ligea's  golden  comb 
Wherewith  she  sits  on  diamond  rocks 
Sleeking  her  soft  alluring  locks. 


Lilian 


233 


LinMnwater 


There  seems  to  be  here  a  cunous 
anticipation  of  Heine's  Lorelei  (q.v.). 

Lilian,  Airy,  Fairy.  First  line  of 
Lilian,  a  short  poem  by  Alfred 
Tennyson. 

Lilliput,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's 
Travels,  an  imaginary  country  peopled 
by  a  diminutive  race  who  describe 
Gulliver  as  the  Man-Mountain.  Their 
sovereign,  whose  dominions  extend 
within  a  dominion  of  no  less  than 
twelve  miles,  is  taller  by  the  breadth 
of  Gulliver's  nail  than  any  of  his 
subjects,  which  alone  is  suflacient  to 
strike  all  with  awe.  He  describes 
himself  as  "  the  delight  and  terror 
of  the  imiverse,  whose  dominions 
extend  to  the  extremities  of  the  globe, 
monarch  of  all  monarchs,  whose  feet 
press  down  to  the  centre  and  whose 
head  strikes  against  the  sun;  at 
whose  nod  the  princes  of  the  earth 
shake  their  knees." 

Lillyyick,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  Nicho- 
las Nickleby,  a  collector  of  water 
rates,  uncle  to  Mrs.  Kenwigs.  The 
entire  Kenwigs  family,  his  expectant 
heirs,  are  alarmed  and  disgusted  when 
he  marries  Henrietta  Petowker ,  an  act- 
ress, newly  engaged  for  the  Crummies 
company  at  Portsmouth.  They  are 
correspondingly  elated  when  she  nms 
away  with  a  half -pay  captain,  ^  and 
Lilljrvick  returns  to  his  own  family. 

Limmason,  Lieut.  Austin,  the  titu- 
lar hero  of  Kipling's  short  story,  The 
Man  who  Was,  in  Life's  Handicap 
(1890).  He  is  brought  in — "  a  limp 
heap  of  rags  " — while  the  mess  of  the 
White  Hussars  are  entertaining  Dir- 
kovitch,  a  Cossack  officer.  He  is 
white,  he  speaks  English,  he  answers 
to  a  nimiber  and  discloses  a  discon- 
certing knowledge  of  mess  matters. 
At  sight  of  the  Cossack  he  grovels 
with  abject  fear  and  in  reply  to  a 
question  tells  of  a  long  period  in 
Siberia.  The  rolls  of  the  regiment 
are  searched.  Under  date,  "  Sebas- 
topol,  1854,"  Lieutenant  Austin  Lim- 
mason is  recorded  as  missing.  The 
man  remembers  his  name  but  dies 
before  many  day^.  A  dramatization 
by  F.  Kingsley  Peile  was  produced 
in  London  by  Beerbohm  Tree  who 
played  Austin  Limmason. 


Lindabrides,  heroine  of  a  romance, 
The  Mirror  of  Knighthood,  one  of  the 
books  in  Don  Quixote's  hbrary  (Don 
Quixote,  Part  I,  i,  6)  whose  name  has 
survived  as  a  cant  term  for  a  courte- 
san, a  woman  of  ill  fame. 

Linden,  in  W.  D.  Howells's  novel, 
A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes.  A  Ger- 
man socialist,  a  hater  of  the  capital- 
istic class,  who  is  employed  on  Every 
Other  Week  but  who  resigns  when  he 
discovers  that  it  is  financed  by  the 
millionaire  Dryfoos.  Colonel  Higgin- 
son  tells  us  that  among  all  HoweUs's 
characters  in  fiction,  the  one  who  most 
caught  Whittier's  fancy  was  "  that 
indomitable  old  German,  Linden," 
whom  he  characterized,  in  writing  to 
Mrs.  Fields,  as  "  that  saint  of  the 
rather  godless  sect  of  dynamiters  and 
atheists — a  grand  figure." 

Lindores,  The  Ladies,  in  the  novel 
of  that  name  by  Mrs.  M.  O.  W.  Oli- 
phant  (1883),  are  the  daughters  of  a 
gentleman  who  has  been  leading  a 
needy  life  abroad  but  succeeds  to  a 
Scotch  peerage  just  as  his  girls  grow 
up,  and  is  straightway  transformed 
from  a  useless  dilettante  into  a  stem, 
scheming  man  of  the  world.  To  the 
lasting  sorrow  of  the  elder  daughter, 
"  poor  Lady  Car,"  and  to  the  scorn 
and  dismay  of  the  yotmger  one, 
Edith,  they  are  made  pawns  in  the 
game  their  father  is  playing.  In  a 
sequel — Lady  Car  (1889) — the  fur- 
ther fortimes  of  the  elder  are  con- 
tinued through  the  blankness  of 
widowhood  to  the  disillusion  of  a 
second  marriage  with  the  lover  of  her 
youth. 

Lindsay,  Margaret,  heroine  of  a 
rather  lachrymose  novel.  The  Trials 
of  Margaret  Lindsay  (1823),  by  John. 
Wilson. 

Linkinwater,  Tim,  in  Dickens's 
Nicholas  Nickleby,  the  cheerful, 
kindly,  business-like  old  clerk,  ulti- 
mately the  business  partner,  of  the 
Cheeryble  Brothers  (q.v.),  said  to 
have  been  drawn  from  an  actual 
employee  of  the  Grant  Brothers. 

Punctual  as  the  counting-house  dial 
.  .  .  he  performed  the  minutest  actions, 
and  arranged  the  minutest  articles  in  his 
little  room  In  a  precise  and  regular  order. 


Lionel 


234 


Livingstone 


paper,  pens,  ink,  ruler,  sealing-wax,  wafers, 
.  .  .  Tim's  hat,  Tim's  scrupulously 
folded  gloves,  Tim's  other  coat,  .  .  . 
all  had  their  accustomed  inches  of  space. 
.  .  .  There  was  not  a  more  accurate 
instrument  in  existence  than  Tim  Linkin- 
water. — Dickens:  Nicholas  Nickleby,  xxxvii 
(1838). 

Lionel,  The  Late  (Fr.  Feu  Lionel), 
hero  of  a  comedy  by  E.  Scribe  pro- 
duced in  1858  at  the  Theatre  Fran- 
9ais,  Paris. 

Lionel  is  a  young  man  who  is  saved 
from  committing  suicide,  and  who 
thenceforth  drops  his  real  name — 
hence  the  title  "feu  Lionel."  Con- 
siderable embarrassment  is  after- 
wards caused  by  his  difficulty  in 
establishing  his  identity. 

Lirriper,  Mrs.,  a  lodging-house 
keeper  in  two  Christmas  stories  by 
Dickens,  Mrs.  Lirriper's  Lodgings 
(1863)  and  Mrs,  Lirriper's  Legacy 
(1864). 

She  is  quite  the  lodging-house  keeper, 
fills  her  home  as  well  as  she  can,  hates  Miss 
Wozenham,  her  rival,  with  a  true  profes- 
sional hatred,  and  yet  she  has  a  goodness, 
an  overflow  of  humor  and  sense,  and  a 
benevolence  quite  her  own.  The  abundance 
of  bye-remarks  that  proceed  from  her  is 
inexhaustible,  and  although  by  the  charac- 
teristic oddity  of  expression  they  are  toler- 
ably well  connected  with  her  they  are  often 
instances  of  the  drollest  and  happiest 
fancies  that  have  come  from  Mr.  Dickens. 
— Saturday  Review,  December  12,  1863. 

Lisa,  heroine  of  George  Eliot's 
poem,  How  Lisa  Loved  the  King 
(1869),  which  versifies  a  tale  from 
Boccaccio  (Decameron).  A  lovely 
Italian  maid  of  wealthy  but  plebian 
parents,  she  looks  coldly  on^  her 
suitors,  for  she  is  pining  away  with  a 
hopeless  passion  for  the  king.  A 
poet  puts  her  story  into  a  song  that 
is  sung  to  beguile  the  royal  leisure. 
The  king,  interested  beyond  his  wont, 
is  yet  more  caught  up  by  learning 
that  the  love  thus  recited  is  a  real 
and  not  an  imaginary  thing,  and  re- 
solves, in  perfect  purity  of  purpose, 
to  have  an  interview  with  the  love- 
lorn damsel.  He  visits  her,  promises 
to  wear  her  colors  in  the  tourney,  and 
to  be  her  faithful  knight,  and  having 
brought  back  the  rosy  health  to  her 
cheeks,  advises  her  to  marry  one  who 
has  long  loved  her.  Lisa  takes  the 
good  counsel,  and  the  King,  in  his 


nobility  of  soul,  settles  a  principality 
upon  the  husband. 

Lisa,  Monna,  mother  of  Tessa,  in 
George  Eliot's  Romola. 

Lishmahago,  Captain,  in  Smollett's 
novel,  Humphrey  Clinker  (1771),  a 
superannuated  officer  on  half -pay,  the 
favored  suitor  of  Miss  Tabitha  Bram- 
ble. He  is  a  hard-headed  and  hard- 
featured  Scotchman,  vain,  pedantic, 
disputatious,  dogmatic;  eccentric  in 
manner  and  in  dress,  but  with  a 
jealous  sense  of  honor  and  a  bigoted 
pride  of  country.  Scott  acknowledges 
that  he  was  in  some  sense  a  forerunner 
of  Dugald  Dalgetty.  Hazlitt  sees  in 
him  a  faint  imitation  of  Don  Quixote. 
Thackeray  recognizes  a  family  like- 
ness in  all  three: 

What  man  who  has  made  his  estimable 
acquaintance — what  novel  reader  who  loves 
Don  Quixote  and  Major  Dalgetty — will 
refuse  his  most  cordial  acknowledgments  to 
the  admirable  Lieutenant  Lishmahago? — 
Thackeray,  English  Humorists. 

Lismahago  is  the  flower  of  the  flock.  His 
tenaciousness  in  argument  is  not  so  delight- 
ful as  the  relaxation  of  his  logical  severity 
when  he  finds  his  fortune  mellowing  in  the 
wintry  smiles  of  Mrs.  Tabitha  Bramble. 
This  is  the  best-preserved  and  most  severe 
of  all  Smollett's  characters.  The  resem- 
blance to  "Don  Quixote"  is  only  just 
enough  to  make  it  interesting  to  the  critical 
reader  without  giving  offence  to  anybody 
else.— Hazlitt. 

Littimer,  in  Dickens's  David  Cop- 
perfield,  the  confidential  servant  of 
Steerforth;  an  embodiment  of  aggres- 
sive and  awesome  respectibility.  "  He 
surrounded  himself  with  an  atmos- 
phere of  respectibility,  and  walked 
secure  in  it.  It  would  have  been  next 
to  impossible  to  suspect  him  of  any- 
thing wrong,  he  was  so  thoroughly 
respectable.  Nobody  could  have 
thought  of  putting  him  in  a  livery,  he 
was  so  highly  respectable.  To  have 
imposed  any  derogatory  work  upon 
him  would  have  been  to^  inflict  a 
wanton  insult  on  the  feelings  of  a 
most  respectable  man." 

Livingstone,  Guy,  hero  of  G.  A. 
Lawrence's  novel  (1857),  Guy  Living- 
stone, or  Thorough,  a  young  aristocrat 
of  considerable  wealth,  of  enormous 
bodily  strength  and  of  an  implacable 
temper — a  Berseker  out  of  his  ele- 
ment in  an  age  of  peace  and  civiliza- 


Liza 


235 


Locksley 


tion — who  finds  vent  for  his  pent-up 
energies  in  libertine  amours  and  phys- 
ical sports.  Despite  his  cruelty  and 
egotism  he  is  immensely  popular, 
especially  with  women.  He  is  a 
direct  descendant  of  Rochester  and 
an  ancestor  of  St.  Elmo. 

Liza,  heroine  of  Tourgenief 's  novel, 
A  Nest  of  Nobles,  and  the  name  under 
which  the  book  itself  has  been  trans- 
lated into  English  by  W.  R.  S. 
Ralston.  Fedor  Lavretsky,  when  a 
boy  in  heart  though  a  man  in  years, 
had  fallen  in  love  with  and  married  a 
frivolous  woman  of  society  who 
proved  false  to  him.  Shocked  and 
outraged,  he  left  her  to  return  to  his 
home.  Here  he  meets  Liza,  whose 
serious,  frank,  and  loyal  nature  re- 
stores his  faith  in  womanhood,  and 
just  as  he  becomes  interested  in  her 
he  receives  news  of  his  wife's  death. 
He  declares  his  love;  Liza  confesses 
her  own.  After  a  moment  of  happi- 
ness their  dream  is  rudely  broken  by 
the  return  of  the  wife,  the  report  of 
her  death  having  been  false.  Liza, 
with  lofty  resignation,  counsels  Fedor 
to  receive  and  forgive  his  erring  wife; 
he  bows  to  what  he  recognizes  as  his 
duty,  and  Liza  goes  into  a  convent. 

Lobaba,  in  Southey's  oriental  epic, 
Thalaba  the  Destroyer  (1801),  one  of 
the  sorcerers  connected  with  Dom- 
Daniel,  who  had  vowed  himself  to 
kill  Thalaba.  He  approached  him 
(Book  III)  in  the  garb  of  a  merchant, 
and  under  pretence  of  guiding  him 
to  Babylon  led  him  astray  into  the 
wilderness  and  there  raised  up  a 
whirlwind  to  destroy  him.  The 
whirlwind,  however,  proved  a  boom- 
erang that  destroyed  Lobaba  and  let 
his  intended  victim  escape. 

Lochiel,  Donald  Cameron  of 
(1695-1748),  generally  known  as 
Gentle  Lochiel,  is  the  titular  hero  of 
Thomas  Campbell's  poem,  LochieVs 
Warning.  The  Highland  seer  who  is 
the  speaker  vainly  warns  him  to  be- 
ware of  the  day — 

When   the    Lowlands    shall    meet    thee   in 

battle  array. 
For  a  field  of  the  dead  rushes  red  on  my 

sight, 
And  the  clans  of  Culloden  are  scattered  in 

flight 


This  is  a  prophetic  glimpse  of  the 
battle  of  Culloden,  April  16,  1746, 
where  Lochiel,  fighting  for  the  Pre- 
tender, was  wounded  and  the  clans 
defeated  by  the  Duke  of  Cimiberland. 

Lochinvar,  Young,  titular  hero  of  a 
ballad  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  a  young 
Highlander  who,  being  invited  to  the 
enforced  wedding  of  the  maiden  he 
himself  loves,  induces  her  only  too 
easily  to  become  his  partner  in  a 
dance;  then,  watching  his  oppor- 
tunity, swings  her  over  the  saddle  of 
his  horse  and  gallops  away  to  the 
dismay  of  her  family,  the  bridegroom 
and  the  wedding  guests. 

Locke,  Alton,  hero  of  Charles 
Kingsley's  novel,  Alton  Locke,  Tailor 
and  Poet  (1849).  A  man  of  infinite 
yearnings,  brought  up  in  sordid  sur- 
roundings and  among  narrow-minded 
dissenters,  he  is  thrown  upon  the 
world  by  his  mother  at  the  instigation 
of  a  clerical  bigot.  He  works  as  a 
tailor,  sees  much  of  the  distressful 
trade  carried  on  in  the  sweater's  den, 
educates  himself,  writes  poems  that 
are  published  by  subscription,  sup- 
ports himself  for  a  while  with  his  pen, 
but  drifts  back  among  his  Chartist 
friends;  is  innocently  mixed  up  with 
the  burning  of  a  farm,  is  sentenced  to 
three  years'  imprisonment,  and  dies 
shortly  after  his  release. 

Lockit,  in  Gay's  Beggar^s  Opera 
(1728),  the  harsh  and  cruel  jailer  of 
Newgate  who  refuses  Captain  Mac- 
heath's  request  for  candles  in  his  cell. 
The  quarrel  between  the  two  was  con- 
temporaneously recognized  as  a  topi- 
cal hit  at  Walpole  and  Lord  Town- 
shend,  who  had  come  into  personal 
collision. 

Lockit,  Lucy,  daughter  of  the 
above.  She  falls  in  love  with  Mac- 
heath  and  helps  him  to  escape  from 
Newgate  in  return  for  his  promise  to 
marry  her.  He  is  recaptured  and  then 
confesses  that  he  already  has  a  wife 
in  Polly  Peachum. 

Locksley,  or  "  Diccon  Bend-the- 
Bow,"  in  Walter  Scott's  romance, 
Ivanhoe,  the  names  under  which  a 
mysterious  stranger  is  introduced. 
He  eclipses  all  the  other  archers  in 
the  passage-of-arms  at  Ashby-de-la- 


Locksley  Hall 


236 


Lorenzaccio 


Zouch,  and  afterwards  he  and  his 
men,  under  the  leadership  of  the 
Black  Knight,  relieve  the  prisoners 
in  Front-de-Boeuf's  castle.  Finally 
he  reveals  himself  to  Richard  I: 
"  Call  me  no  longer  Locksley,  my 
Liege,"  he  says,  "but  know  me  under 
the  name  which,  I  fear,  fame  hath 
blown  too  widely  not  to  have  reached 
even  your  royal  ears — I  am  Robin 
Hood  of  Sherwood  Forest." 

Locksley  Hall,  a  feigned  country 
seat,  obviously  in  Lincolnshire,  which 
Tennyson  makes  the  scene  of  two 
poems  Locksley  Hall  (1842)  and 
Locksley  Hall;  Twenty  Years  After 
(1886).  Here  the  unnamed  hero  has 
spent  his  orphaned  youth  imder  the 
guardianship  of  an  imcle;  here  has 
met,  loved  and  been  jilted  by  his 
cousin  Amy.  In  the  first  poem  he 
pours  out  his  scorn  for  Amy,  her 
wealthy  boor  of  a  husband,  her  mother 
and  the  entire  social  order.  He  wildly 
protests  that  he  will  abandon  civiliza- 
tion and  take  to  wife  some  savage 
woman  who  shall  rear  him  a  dusky 
brood.  Finally  he  schools  himself  to 
self-conquest  by  dwelling  on  the 
insignificance  of  the  individual;  the 
mighty  meaning  of  the  race  and  the 
glorious  possibilities  of  the  future. 

In  the  second  Locksley  Hall  the  im- 
age of  old  age  is  as  clear  and  true  as 
the  image  of  youth  in  its  predecessor. 

The  old  lover  of  Locksley  Hall  is  exactly 
what  the  young  man  must  have  become, 
without  any  change  of  character  by  force 
of  time  and  experience,  if  he  had  grown  with 
the  growth  of  his  age.  For  that  reason  alone 
the  poem  in  its  entirety  has  a  peculiar 
historical  importance  as  the  impersonation 
of  the  emotional  life  of  a  whole  generation. 
Its  psychological  portraiture  is  perfect,  its 
workmanship  exquisite,  and  its  force  and 
freshness  of  poetic  fervor  wonderful. — 
Lord  Robert  Bulwer  Lytton,  letter  to 
Mary  Anderson  quoted  in  Hallam  Tenny- 
son's Life  of  his  father,  vol.  11,  p.  330. 

Lodore,  hero  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  (1835)  by  Mrs.  Shelley,  a  mor- 
bid sentimentalist  who  has  a  liaison 
with  a  married  woman  of  title,  mar- 
ries a  girl  of  the  lower  classes,  is  horri- 
fied to  find  his  illegitimate  son  at- 
tempting a  flirtation  with  his  wife, 
leaves  her  and  dies  in  a  duel  in  New 
York.  Luckily  she  is  rescued  from 
the  dangers  that  surround  her  by  her 


love  for  a  noble  being  named  Horatio 
Saville,  an  evident  portrait  of  Shelley. 
Lodowick,  Friar,  in  Shakespeare's 
Measure  for  Measure,  the  name 
assumed  by  Duke  Vincentio  (q.v.). 

Loftus,  Father  Tom,  in  Lever's 
Confessions  of  Harry  Lorrequer,  a 
kind-hearted,  good-tempered,  rollick- 
ing Irish  priest,  fond  of  telling  a  good 
story  and  of  assisting  at  the  emptying 
of  a  bowl  of  punch.  The  character 
has  been  borrowed  by  Boucicault 
in  the  Father  Tom  of  his  Colleen 
Bawn.  Lever  drew  him  from  a  Father 
Comyns  of  Kilkee,  in  Clare,  whose 
hospitality  had  been  extended  to  the 
author  for  three  months  while  the 
latter  was  in  hiding  from  his  Dublin 
duns.  Father  Comyns  recognized 
the  portrait  at  once,  and  in  a  letter 
to  the  mutual  friend  who  had  intro- 
duced him  to  Lever,  protested  against 
this  breach  of  hospitality.  In  spite 
of  all  Lever's  attempts  at  extenuation, 
the  priest  never  gave  his  absolution 
to  the  author  of  the  Confessions. 

Lofty  Jack,  in  Goldsmith's  comedy 
of  The  Goodnatured  Man,  a  gentleman 
who  makes  his  way  among  his  credi- 
tors by  the  magnificent  audacity  of 
his  lies.  He  claims  to  have  the  ear  of 
pariiament  and  of  the  King,  to  be  the 
JDOSom  friend  of  the  ministers  and  the 
intimate  acquaintance  of  all  persons 
of  rank  and  fashion,  with  more 
offices  in  his  gift  than  any  other  man 
in  England.  The  character  is  almost 
identical  with  that  of  Beau  Tibbs  in 
the  Citizen  of  the  World,  only  he  is 
placed  in  better  circumstances. 

Longaville,  in  Shakespeare's  com- 
edy. Love's  Labor's  Lost  (1594),  a 
young  lord  attending  on  Ferdinand, 
King  of  Navarre  (q.v.).  No  sooner 
has  he  signed  the  compact  of  solitary 
study  for  three  years  than  he  falls  in 
love  with  Maria.  "  A  man  of  sover- 
eign parts  "  and  glorious  in  arms,  his 
only  fault 

Is  a  sharp  wit  matched  with  too  blunt  a  will ; 
Whose  edge  none  spares  that  come  within 
his  power.  Act  ii,  So.  2. 

Lorenzaccio,  in  Alfred  de  Musset's 
tragedy  of  that  name  (1833),  drama- 
tizing an  episode  in  mediaeval  Floren- 
tine history. 


Lorenzo 


237 


Lost  Leader 


The  Lorenzaccio  of  De  Musset,  the  filthy 
wretch  who  is  a  demon  and  an  angel,  with 
his  fierce,  serpent-tongued  repartees,  his 
subtle  blasphemies,  his  cynical  levity  play- 
ing over  a  passion  of  horror  at  the  wicked- 
ness and  cowardice  of  the  world  that  toler- 
ates him. — G.  B.  Shaw:  Dramatic  Opinions, 
ii,  294. 

Lorenzo,  in  Shakespeare's  Merchant 
of  Venice,  a  high-spirited,  care-free, 
romantic  boy  who  elopes  with  Jessica. 
We  should  Hke  Jessica  better  if  she 
had  not  deceived  and  robbed  her 
father,  and  Lorenzo,  if  he  had  not 
married  a  Jewess,  though  he  thinks 
he  has  a  right  to  wrong  a  Jew.  The 
dialogue  between  this  newly-married 
couple  by  moonlight,  beginning  "  On 
such  a  night,"  etc.,  is  a  collection  of 
classical  elegancies. 

Lorenzo,  an  atheist  and  evil  liver 
in  Young's  Night  Thoughts,  held 
up  as  a  warning  and  example  to 
others.  It  has  been  thought  to  be  a 
portrait  of  the  poet's  son,  who  was 
something  of  a  prodigal.  Dr.  Johnson 
points  out,  however,  that  in  1741, 
when  the  poem  was  written,  "  this 
Lorenzo,  this  finished  infidel,  this 
father  to  whose  education  vice  had 
for  some  years  put  the  last  hand,  was 
only  eight  years  old."  He  is  inclined 
to  beHeve  that  Lorenzo  was  entirely 
a  fictitious  person. 

Lorge,  De,  hero  of  a  ballad,  Der 
Handschuh  {The  Glove),  versifying  a 
legend  which  Schiller  found  in  Frois- 
sart's  Chronicles.  De  Lorge,  one  of 
the  courtiers  of  Francis  I  of  France, 
one  day  sat  making  love  to  his  lady 
in  the  gallery  of  the  amphitheatre 
above  the  wild  beasts.  From  sheer 
levity  and  hardness  of  heart  she 
threw  her  glove  into  the  arena  and 
challenged  her  lover  to  bring  it  back 
as  a  test  of  his  boasted  love.  He  de- 
scended and  recovered  it,  then  flung 
it  into  her  face,  all  his  love  changed 
to  contempt  by  this  revelation  of  her 
character.  Bulwer's  translation  is 
very  good.  Leigh  Hunt  and  Robert 
Browning  have  a  poem  on  the  same 
subject,  Leigh  Hunt  closing  as  Schiller 
does  by  leaving  the  lady  silent  and 
ashamed  in  the  midst  of  the  assembly. 
Browning,  who  tells  the  story  in  the 
person  of  Ronsard,  a  pretended  wit- 


ness to  the  event,  goes  on  to  vindicate 
the  lady  by  a  curious  analysis  of  the 
motives  that  prompted  her  to  this 
test  of  her  lover's  truthfulness  and 
makes  De  Lorge  end  by  marrying  a 
mistress  of  the  king,  who  takes  par- 
ticular pleasure  in  sending  her  spouse 
after  her  gloves. 

Lorraine,  Mrs.  Felix,  in  Disraeli's 
Vivian  Grey,  a  clever,  designing, 
vicious  and  unscrupulous  woman, 
who  sometimes  aids  and  sometimes 
thwarts  the  plans  of  Vivian  and 
finally,  becoming  his  implacable 
enemy,  ^  tries  to  poison  him.  Says 
Vivian  to  himself:  "  A  horrible 
thought  sometimes  comes  over  my 
spirit.  I  fancy  that  in  this  woman  I 
have  met  a  kind  of  double  of  myself — 
the  same  wonderful  knowledge  of  the 
human  mind,  the  same  directness  of 
voice,  the  same  miraculous  manage- 
ment which  has  brought  us  both 
together  under  the  same  roof,  yet  do 
I  find  in  her  the  most  abandoned  of 
all  beings,  a  creature  guilty  of  that 
which  even  in  this  guilty  age  I 
thought  was  obsolete."  The  charac- 
ter was  undoubtedly  drawn  from 
Lady  Caroline  Lamb. 

Lorrequer,  Harry,  hero  of  Charles 
Lever's  novel.  The  Confessions  of 
Harry  Lorrequer  (1837),  a  young 
Irishman  of  good  family  who,  after 
campaigning  with  Wellington  on  the 
Continent,  comes  home  to  Ireland 
and,  shifting  from  Cork  to  Dublin 
and  then  back  again  to  Germany,  gets 
himself  tangled  up  in  tragi-comic  per- 
plexities from  which  he  is  invariably 
extricated  by  dint  of  his  own  high 
spirits,  or  the  good-nature  and  clever- 
ness of  others. 

We  are  not  Interested  In  Harry's  love 
affairs,  but  in  his  scrapes,  adventures,  duels 
at  home  and  abroad.  He  fights  people  by 
mistake  whom  he  does  not  know  by  sight, 
he  appears  on  parade  with  his  face  blackened 
he  wins  large  piles  at  trente  et-quarante;  he 
disposes  of  coopers  of  claret  and  bowls  of 
punch,  and  the  sheep  on  one  thousand  hills 
provide  him  with  devilled  kidneys.  The 
critics  and  the  authors  thought  little  of  the 
medley  but  the  public  enjoyed  it  and  defied 
the  reviewers. — ANDREW  Lang:  Essays 
in  Little,  p.  164. 

Lost  Leader,  The,  is  the  title  of 
one  of  Browning's  most  famous  poems 


Lothair 


238 


Lothario 


— a  passionate  invective  upbraiding 
some  person  unnamed  for  having 
been  tempted  by  a  few  paltry  rewards, 
to  desert  his  cause.  There  has 
been  some  question  as  to  the  person 
aimed  at — ^Wordsworth,  Goethe  and 
Southey — all  of  whom  changed  in 
mature  life  from  the  radicalism  of 
their  youth  to  extreme  conservatism 
— being  suggested  by  rival  disputants. 
But  the  controversy  was  settled  by  a 
letter  inserted  in  Grosart's  edition  of 
the  Prose  Works  of  William  Words- 
worth: 

19,  Warwick-crescent,  W. 
Dear  Mr.  Grosart:  Feb.  24,  '75. 

I  have  been  asked  the  question  you  now 
address  me  with,  and  as  duly  answered  it, 
I  can't  remember  how  many  times;  there 
is  no  sort  of  objection  to  one  more  assurance, 
or  rather  confession,  on  my  part,  that  I  did 
in  my  hasty  youth  presume  to  use  the  great 
and  venerated  personality  of  Wordsworth 
as  a  sort  of  painter's  model;  one  from  which 
this  or  the  other  particular  feature  may  be 
selected  and  turned  to  account:  had  I  in- 
tended more,  above  all,  such  a  boldness  as 
portraying  the  entire  man,  I  should  not 
have  talked  about  "handfuls  of  silver  and 
bits  of  ribbon."  These  never  influenced  the 
change  of  politics  in  the  great  poet;  whose 
defection,  nevertheless,  accompanied  as  it 
was  by  a  regular  face-about  of  his  special 
party,  was  to  my  juvenile  apprehension, 
and  even  mature  consideration,  an  event  to 
deplore.  But  just  as  in  the  tapestry  on  my 
wall  I  can  recognize  figures  which  have 
struck  out  a  fancy,  on  occasion,  that  though 
truly  enough  thus  derived,  yet  would  be 
preposterous  as  a  copy,  so,  though  I  dare 
not  deny  the  original  of  my  little  poem,  I 
altogether  refuse  to  have  it  considered  as 
the  "very  effigies"  of  such  a  moral  and  in- 
tellectual superiority. 

Faithfully  yours, 

Robert  Browning. 

Lothair,  titular  hero  of  a  novel 
(1871)  by  Benjamin  Disraeli,  a  young 
English  nobleman  who  succeeds  to 
an  immense  fortune  after  a  long 
minority.  The  Catholic  Church  and 
the  Revolutionary  societies  run  a 
race  against  each  other  for  his  money 
and  influence.  The  latter  win  chiefly 
through  his  platonic  love  for  Theo- 
dora, the  wife  of  an  American  general 
who  is  the  inspiring  element  of  the 
Italian  patriots.  After  adventures 
with  both  parties  he  finally  escapes  to 
England,  where  he  recovers  his  senses, 
saves  the  remainder  of  his  fortune, 
and  marries  the  Lady  Corisande. 

The  immediate  provocation  for  the 


novel  was  the  conversion  of  John, 
second  Marquis  of  Bute,  a  young  and 
enormously  wealthy  peer,  to  the 
Church  of  Rome.  He  had  been  re- 
ceived on  Christmas  Eve,  1868. 
Lothair's  coming  of  age  is  copied 
faithfully  from  the  picturesque  cere- 
monials with  which  Lord  Bute's 
majority  had  been  celebrated  in  Sep- 
tember, 1868,  and  the  intrigues  con- 
cocted in  order  to  make  Lothair  a 
Roman  Catholic  bear  a  close  resem- 
blance to  those  which  were  said  to 
have  entrapped  Lord  Bute.  But 
there  the  similarity  ended.  In  ap- 
pearance, character,  and  tastes  Lo- 
thair has  no  resemblance  to  Lord 
Bute,  and  whereas  Lord  Bute  suc- 
ctmibed,  Lothair  emerged  triumphant 
from  his  encounter  with  the  prosely- 
tizers. 

Lothario,  in  Cervantes's  story.  The 
Curious  Impertinent  (Don  Quixote, 
i,  iv,  6),  a  Florentine  cavalier,  the 
friend  of  Anselmo.  The  latter,  proud 
of  his  wife  Camilla  and  convinced  of 
her  virtue,  challenges  Lothario  to  put 
it  to  the  test.  Lothario's  attack, 
begun  reluctantly  enough  in  a  spirit 
of  bravado,  ends  in  a  serious  passion; 
the  lady  succimibs  and  the  pair  elope. 
Anselmo  dies  of  grief,  Lothario  is 
slain  in  battle  and  Camilla  retires  to 
a  convent  where  she,  too,  shortly  dies. 
Rowe  imdoubtedly  took  the  name  of 
Lothario  from  the  hero  of  this  story. 

Lothario,  in  Rowe's  tragedy,  The 
Fair  Penitent  (1703),  a  young  Geno- 
ese nobleman,  a  brilliant,  handsome 
and  perfidious  libertine,  who  seduces 
Calista  and  is  killed  in  a  duel  by 
Altamont,  her  husband.  He  im- 
doubtedly suggested  the  Lovelace  of 
Richardson  and  thus  became  the  pro- 
totype of  a  long  line  of  splendid  but 
treacherous  villains  in  fiction  and 
drama.  In  Act  v,  Sc.  i,  occurs  the 
line  which  has  always  been  accepted 
as  succinctly  descriptive. 
Is  this  that  haughty,  gallant,  gay  Lothario? 

The  character  of  Lothario  seems  to  have 
been  expanded  by  Richardson  into  that  of 
Lovelace;  but  he  has  excelled  his  original  in 
the  moral  effect  of  the  fiction.  Lothario, 
with  gaiety  which  cannot  be  hated,  and 
bravery  which  cannot  be  despised,  retains 
too  much  of  the  spectator's  kindness.     It 


Lothario 


239 


Lovelace 


was  in  the  power  of  Richardson  alone,  to 
teach  us  at  once  esteem  and  detestation;  to 
make  virtuous  resentment  overpower  all  the 
benevolence  which  wit,  and  elegance,  and 
courage,  naturally  excite:  and  to  lose  at  last 
the  hero  in  the  villain. — Dr.  Johnson. 

Lothario,  in  Goethe's  Wilhelm 
Meister's  Lehrjahre,  a  magnificent 
German  aristocrat,  the  friend  and 
patron  of  Wilhelm.  The  portrait  is 
evidently  drawn  after  Karl  August 
of  Weimar,  who  stood  in  the  same 
relation  to  Goethe. 

Loti,  Pierre,  the  pseudonym  of 
Louis  Marie  Julien  Viaud,  a  French 
naval  officer  who  has  distinguished 
himself  in  literature.  Though  ener- 
getic in  action,  young  Louis  was  so 
bashful  and  self-effacing  that  his 
comrades  nicknamed  him  Loti  after 
a  modest  little  Indian  flower  which 
shuns  the  light.  His  early  novel, 
Rarahu  (1880),  was  repubhshed  in 
1882  under  the  title  of  The  Marriage 
of  Loti.  It  is  largely  autobiographi- 
cal. So  are  its  successors,  Le  Roman 
d'un  Spahi  and  Madame  Chrysan- 
theme,  whose  hero  is  still  named  Loti, 
and  remains  a  naval  officer  voyaging 
from  port  to  port,  who  enters  into  a 
series  of  morganatic  marriages  with 
the  native  women  of  the  countries  he 
visits.    See  Rarahu. 

Lotte,  in  Goethe's  novel,  The  Sor- 
rows of  Werther,  the  diminutive  by 
which  Charlotte,  the  wife  of  Albert, 
is  known  in  her  own  family  circle. 
She  was  drawn  from  Charlotte 
(Lotte)  Buff  whom  Goethe  met  at  a 
ball  in  Wetzlar  in  May,  1772.  She 
was  the  betrothed  of  his  friend  Kest- 
ner,  a  dry,  formal  and  upright  man, 
too  short-sighted  to  understand  that 
Lotte  and  his  brilliant  friend  were 
fast  falling  in  love  with  each  other. 
Indeed  Goethe  himself  did  not  realize 
that  he  was  playing  with  fire  until 
one  moonlight  night  Lotte  uninten- 
tionally revealed  the  secret.  Then 
he  incontinently  fled  from  Wetzlar, 
partly  from  altruistic  loyalty  to  Kest- 
ner  and  partly  from  egoistic  regard 
for  his  own  comfort.  Love  that 
might  lead  either  to  scandal  or  to 
matrimony  "was  not  a  desirable  con- 
tingency.   See  Werther. 


Louis  XI  of  France  is  the  hero  of 
a  drama  by  Casimir  de  la  Vigue,  and 
is  introduced  as  a  prominent  char- 
acter in  two  of  Scott's  novels,  Quentin 
Durward  and^  Anne  of  Gier stein. 

Lovegold,  in  Fielding's  The  Miser, 
a  paraphrase  of  Moliere's  L'Avare,  is 
an  old  man  of  sixty  engaged  to  marry 
a  designing  yotmg  miss  of  nineteen, 
Marianna,  who  so  alarms  him  by  her 
pretended  extravagance  in  ordering 
jewelry  and  dresses  that  he  gladly 
pays  ;^2000  to  be  let  off  the  bargain, 
and  she  marries  Lovegold 's  son. 

Lovel,  Lord,  hero  of  The  Mistletoe 
Bough  (1839),  a  song  by  Thomas 
Haynes  Bayley.  On  the  night  of  his 
wedding  to  a  baron's  daughter  the 
bride  plays  a  game  of  hide  and  seek 
and  shuts  herself  up  in  an  old  oak 
chest  whose  lid  closes  in  upon  her  by 
its  spring  lock.  In  vain  the  bride- 
groom seeks  her  far  and  wide;  no 
clue  is  discovered  until  years  after- 
wards when  the  old  chest  is  sold  and 
the  purchaser  discovers  a  skeleton  in 
bridal  array.  The  same  story  is  told 
by  Rogers  in  Italy.    See  Ginevra. 

Lovel,  Peregrine,  in  Rev.  J.  Town- 
ley's  farce  High  Life  below  Stairs 
(i759)>  3-  wealthy  commoner  who, 
suspecting  his  servants  of  extrava- 
gance and  dishonesty,  pretends^  to 
withdraw  into  the  country,  disguises 
himself  as  an  Essex  bumpkin,  applies 
for  service  in  his  own  town  house  and 
is  hired  by  the  unsuspecting  butler 
Philip.  He  discovers  that  Philip  has 
invited  to  supper  a  large  company 
of  gentlemen's  gentlemen  and  their 
sweethearts,  that  they  assemble  under 
the  names  and  titles  of  their  respec- 
tive masters  and  mistresses,  drink  his 
rarest  wines  and  feed  at  his  expense 
on  the  best  that  the  markets  afford. 
At  the  height  of  the  fun  he  breaks  up 
the  revels  by  announcing  himself. 

Lovelace,  Robert,  the  hero-villain 
of  Richardson's  novel,  Clarissa  Har- 
lowe,  who  lays  siege  to  the  heroine's 
virtue  and  finally  accomplishes  her 
ruin  by  means  of  a  drug.  See 
Lothario. 

Is  there  anything  better  than*  Lovelace 
in  the  whole  range  of  fiction?  Take  Love- 
lace in  all  or  any  of  his  moods,  suppliant, 


Loveless 


240 


Lucasta 


intriguing,  repentant,  triumphant — above 
all  triumphant — and  find  his  parallel  if  you 
can.  Where,  you  ask,  did  the  little  printer 
of  Salisbury  Court — who  suggests  to  Mr. 
Leslie  Stephen  "a  plump  white  mouse  In  a 
wig" — where  did  Richardson  discover  so 
much  gallantry  and  humanity,  so  much 
romance  and  so  much  fact,  such  an  abun- 
dance of  the  heroic  qualities  and  the  baser 
veracities  of  mortal  nature?  Lovelace  is, 
if  you  except  Don  Quixote,  the  completest 
hero  in  fiction.  He  has  wit,  humor,  grace, 
brilliance,  charm;  he  is  a  scoundrel  and  a 
ruffian,  and  he  is  a  gentleman  and  a  man; 
of  his  kind  and  in  his  degree  he  has  the  right 
Shakespearean  quality. — W.  E.  Henley: 
Views  and  Reviews,  p.  220. 

Loveless,  Edward,  with  his  wife 
Amanda,  the  leading  characters  in 
Colley  Gibber's  comedy,  Love's  Last 
Shift  or  the  Fool  in  Fashion  (1695);  in 
its  sequel  The  Relapse,  or  Virtue  in 
Danger  (1696)  by  Sir  John  Vanbnigh; 
and  in  an  adaptation  of  the  latter  com- 
edy by  Sheridan  rechristened  The 
Trip  to  Scarborough. 

In  the  first  play  Loveless,  a  young 
rake,  recently  married  to  Amanda, 
wearies  of  her  monotonous  virtues  and 
abandons  her  to  pursue  a  dissipated 
career  in  the  European  capitals. 
After  ten  years  he  returns  and  is  told 
that  she  is  dead.  This  is  only  a  ruse. 
Amanda  is  alive  and  still  in  love  with 
him.  She  has  him  introduced  into 
her  house  by  candlelight  and  passes 
herself  off  as  a  lady  fond  of  gallantry. 
Charmed  with  her  feigned  looseness 
of  behavior,  he  falls  in  love  with  a 
supposed  mistress  who  had  wearied 
him  as  a  wife.  When  she  has  him 
securely  in  her  toils,  she  reveals  the 
truth. 

In  The  Relapse  Vanbrugh  paints 
Loveless'  second  fall  from  marital 
integrity; — his  pursuit  of  the,  appar- 
ently, only  too  willing  Berinthia  who, 
however,  only  toys  with  him  to  arouse 
the  jealousy  of  her  real  object,  Colonel 
Townly.  Amanda  is  almost  tempted 
to  retaliation,  but  at  the  critical 
moment  recovers  herself  and  dis- 
misses first  Mr.  Worthy,  for  whom  she 
has  some  esteem,  and  next  the  profli- 
gate and  f  oohsh  Sir  Poppington  whom 
she  holds  in  contempt.  Her  recreant 
husband  overhears  the  scene  with  the 
latter  and  is  once  more  restored  to 
fealty  and  repentance. 


Lovell,  Archie,  in  the  novel  of  that 
title  (1866)  by  Mrs.  Annie  Edwardes, 
a  pretty  young  hoyden,  innocently 
audacious,  who  scandalizes  the 
"  shady  English "  by  her  tomboy 
manners  and  defiance  of  convention. 
She  escapes  by  only  the  narrowest 
margin  from  the  disastrous  conse- 
quences of  a  wild  adventiire  with  a 
young  man  undertaken  in  perfect 
ignorance  of  the  ways  of  the  world. 

Lovely,  Anne,  heroine  of  Mrs.  Cent- 
livre's  comedy,  A  Bold  Stroke  jor  a 
Wife  (1718),  an  orphan  whose  father 
has  left  her  ;^30,ooo  which  she  will 
forfeit  if  she  marries  without  the  con- 
sent of  four  guardians, — each  so  full 
of  idiosyncrasies  that  "  they  never 
agreed  on  any  one  thing."  Colonel 
Feignwell,  whom  she  favors,  succeeds 
in  ingratiating  himself  with  each  and 
all  by  sheer  audacity. 

Love-o'-women,  the  nickname  of 
Larry  Tighe  and  the  title  of  a  story 
in  Rudyard  Kipling's  Many  Inven- 
tions. A  handsome  man,  "  wicked  as 
all  hell,"  his  favorite  amusement  was 
the  seduction  of  innocent  women. 
Mulvaney  meets  him  in  later  life  a 
victim  of  torturing  remorse. 

It  is  worth  a  hundred  addresses  on  Social 
Purity  platforms  and  yet  is  written  with 
an  artistic  reliance  which  is  beyond  all 
praise. — London  Athenaum. 

Lowrie,  Joan,  heroine  of  That  Lass 
0'  Lowrie' s  (1877),  by  Mrs.  Frances 
Hodgson  Burnett.  She  works  at  the 
mouth  of  a  Lancashire  coal  pit.  Her 
father,  a  savage  miner,  is  accustomed 
to  beat  her  when  he  is  drunk.  Touched 
by  the  kindness  of  a  pleasant  yoimg 
engineer  when  she  is  suffering  from 
one  of  the  paternal  castigations,  she 
in  return  saves  him  from  her  father's 
hatred,  helps  rescue  him,  half  dead, 
from  the  mine  after  a  terrible  acci- 
dent, and  consents  to  marry  him  on 
finding  that  he  had  long  been  in  love 
with  her. 

Lucasta,  the  name  under  which 
Richard  Lovelace  (161 8-1 658)  cele- 
brated his  ladylove,  Lucy  Sacheverell, 
in  a  series  of  lyrics.  Casta  is  Latin 
for  chaste  and  the  name  has  been 
alternatively  interpreted  as  "  Chaste 
Lucy"   or    "Chaste   Light"    {Lux 


Lucetta  ' 


•241 


Lucretia 


casta).  Amarantha  and  Althea  ap- 
pear to  have  been  other  names  for 
the  same  sweetheart.  Tradition 
asserts  that  Lovelace  was  betrothed 
to  her;  but  on  his  being  taken  prisoner 
in  one  of  the  wars  of  the  time  and 
reported  to  be  dead,  she  hastily- 
married  another.  He  soon  returned 
to  his  native  land,  imprecated  anath- 
emas upon  the  sex,  declined  into  a 
vagabond  and  died  miserably  in  a 
cellar.  It  must  be  added  that  the 
posthimious  poems  of  Lovelace  con- 
tain no  reference  to  Lucasta's  broken 
troth.  His  place  in  literature  is  main- 
tained to-day  by  two  among  his 
many  lyrics:  To  Lucasta,  on  going  to 
the  Wars,  and  To  Althea  from  Prison. 

Lucetta,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  maid 
to  Julia.  She  is  sharp  enough  to 
discover  the  true  character  of  Proteus. 

Lucile,  titular  heroine  of  a  novel  in 
verse  (i860)  by  Robert,  Lord  Lytton 
("  Owen  Meredith  ").  A  correspond- 
ent of  the  London  Literary  World 
first  pointed  out  that  Book  i  is  a 
mere  reproduction  in  English  ana- 
paests of  George  Sand's  prose  tale, 
Lavinia,  with  the  situations  and 
motif  so  modified  as  to  make  them 
acceptable  to  the  conventional  stand- 
ards of  Anglo-Saxon  morality. 

Lucile,  beautiful,  impassioned  and 
accompHshed,  had  been  betrothed  in 
exti*eme  youth  to  Lord  Alfred  Har- 
grave.  Circumstances  had  parted 
them.  For  ten  years  she  had  borne 
a  smiling  face  and  an  aching  heart  in 
brilliant  French  society.  He  mean- 
while, a  blas6  man  of  the  world,  had 
been  seeking  peace  of  mind  and  con- 
science in  travel.  Learning  of  his 
engagement  to  Matilda  Darcy,  a 
cousin,  Lucile  writes  the  letter  which 
opens  the  book  asking  that  he  return 
her  letters  in  person.  The  old  passion 
revives.  There  is  now  a  rival  in  the 
field,  a  fiery  French  legitimist,  the 
Duke  of  Luvois.  Lucile  refuses  him. 
With  diabolical  ingenuity  he  suggests 
base  suspicions  to  Alfred,  thus  frus- 
trating a  union  which  could  alone 
have  filled  up  the  void  in  two  desolate 
natures.  The  Englishman  marries 
his  cousin:  the  Frenchman  takes  to 


family  pride  and  military  glory. 
Again  and  again  these  two  men  are 
brought  into  collision  and  protected 
from  each  other  by  the  lonely  Lucile. 
Alfred's  son  falls  in  love  with  the 
Duke's  niece.  They  are  forbidden  to 
think  of  each  other.  The  boy  takes 
service  in  the  Crimea  and,  wounded, 
is  tended  by  Soeur  Seraphine,  a 
nursing  mm  who  proves  to  be  Lucile. 
She  learns  his  secret.  The  might 
of  the  persuasion  of  one  so  suffering 
and  so  religious  ends  in  the  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  old  enemies  and  the  union 
of  the  young  people. 

Luck,  Thomas  (so  named  at  a 
rough  christening  by  a  miner),  the 
child-hero  of  Bret  Harte's  story  of 
life  (and  birth  and  death)  in  a  Cali- 
fornia mining  camp,  entitled  The 
Luck  of  Roaring  Camp.  The  story 
deals  with  the  tmexpected  appearance 
of  the  baby  amid  these  rough  sur- 
roundings, the  death  of  its  mother, 
the  only  woman  in  camp,  and  later 
of  the  child  itself  after  it  has  per- 
formed its  mission  of  civilizing  the 
camp  up  to  the  point  that  it  was 
actually  proposed  to  build  a  hotel 
and  invite  a  few  decent  famihes  to 
reside  there  for  the  sake  of  "  the 
Luck  " — who  it  was  hoped^  would 
profit  by  female  companionship. 

Lucretia,  heroine  of  Lucretia,  or 
Children  of  the  Night  (1847),  a 
romance  by  Bulwer-Lytton.  Dis- 
covering the  weakness  and  perfidy  of 
Mainwaring  (q.v.),  who  engages  him- 
self to  her  while  really  loving  her 
cousin  Susan  Mivers,  Lucretia,  an 
orphan  of  great  talents  and  fierce 
passions,  elopes  to  France  with  her 
tutor,  Dalibard,  a  French  emigr^, 
clever,  unscrupulous  and  atheistical. 
Presently  he  seeks  to  deliver  himself 
from  his  shrewish  wife.  She  finds 
herself  under  the  influence  of  slow 
poison.  If  Dalibard  lives  she  must 
die.  She  betrays  him  to  an  assassin. 
Having  once  tasted  blood  she  de- 
velops into  a  fiend.  Returning  to 
England  she  ruins  the  domestic  hap- 
piness of  Mainwaring,  marries^  a 
Methodist  minister  and  poisons  him, 
attempts  other  crimes,  and,  inad- 
vertently poisoning  her  own  son,  ends 


LucuUus 


242 


Lycidas 


her  life  in  a  madhouse.  Main  waring 's 
original  was  Thomas  Griffith  Waigne- 
wright. 

Lucullus,  in  Shakespeare's  Timon 
of  Athens,  a  false  and  fawning  friend. 
Timon's  servant  calls  him  "  thou 
disease  of  a  friend." 

Lucy,  heroine  of  a  ballad,  Lucy 
and  Colin,  by  Thomas  Tickell.  Lucy 
is  betrothed  to  Colin  but  he  forsakes 
her  for  a  bride  **  thrice  as  rich  as  he." 
At  his  wedding  he  catches  sight  of 
her,  standing  silent  and  apart  and, 
all  his  heart  going  out  to  her  with 
pity  and  love,  **  the  damps  of  death 
bedewed  his  brow."  She  also  dies 
and  is  buried  with  him.  Vincent 
Bourne  has  translated  the  poem  into 
Latin  verse.  Goldsmith  calls  it  the 
best  ballad  in  our  language. 

Ludington,  Miss,  heroine  of  Ed- 
ward Bellamy's  fantastic  novelette, 
Miss  Ludington' s  Sister.  A  beautiful 
girl  changed  by  misfortune  and  sick- 
ness into  a  sad  and  faded  woman,  she 
preserves  an  early  portrait  of  herself 
and  conceives  the  idea  that  what  she 
was  once  must  still  exist  somewhere. 
The  delusion  is  furthered  by  impos- 
tors who  undertake  to  materialize  the 
wraith  and  introduce  their  tool  to  Miss 
Ludington  as  her  soul-sister,  but  the 
go-between  breaks  down  and  confesses. 

Ludlow,  Johnny,  the  pretended 
author  of  a  series  of  stories  and 
sketches  (1874  and  1880)  by  Mrs. 
Henry  Wood.  Johnny  is  the  ward 
of  a  Worcestershire  squire,  whose 
healthy  country  life  enables  him  to 
exercise  his  faculties  of  observation 
upon  a  nvmiber  of  oddities  in  different 
walks  of  Hfe,  and  his  descriptive 
powers  upon  not  a  few  domestic 
tragedies  and  romances.  Johnny  acts 
as  a  sort  of  chorus;  sometimes  he 
plays  a  minor  part. 

The  admirable  way  in  which  Mrs.  Wood 
preserves  throughout  the  genuinely  boyish 
tone  is  not  the  least  of  the  merits  of  her 
book. — Spectator. 

Luggnagg,  in  Gulliver's  Travels,  an 
imaginary  island,  about  a  hundred 
leagiies  southeast  of  Japan,  the  in- 
habitants of  which  have  received  the 
gift  of  eternal  life,  without  the  corre- 
sponding accompaniments  of  health 
and  intellect.    ^ 


Luke,  hero  of  Massinger's  City 
Madam,  who,  from  a  state  of  poverty, 
suddenly  comes  into  the  possession 
of  unbounded  wealth,  a  type  of 
vindictive  hypocrisy. 

Lumpkin,  Tony,  in  Goldsmith's 
comedy,  She  Stoops  to  Conquer  (1773), 
a  coarse,  good-natured,  fun-loving 
country  booby,  whose  love  of  prac- 
tical joking  leads  him  to  point  out 
his  own  home,  the  house  of  his  step- 
father, Squire  Hardcastle,  as  an  inn. 
Hence  Young  Marlow  and  Hastings 
arrive  there  under  a  misapprehension 
and  the  consequent  comedy  of  errors 
is  not  fully  cleared  up  until  Tony 
confesses  lus  complicity.  See  Mar- 
low,  Young. 

Tony  is  one  of  the  especial  favorites 
of  the  theatre-loving  public,  and  no 
wonder.  With  all  the  young  cub's  jibes 
and  jeers,  his  impudence  and  grimaces, 
one  has  a  sneaking  love  for  the  scape- 
grace; we  laugh  with  him  rather  than 
at  him;  nor  can  we  fail  to  enjoy  those 
malevolent  tricks  of  his  when  he  so 
obviously  enjoys  them  himself. 

Luria,  in  Robert  Browning's  trag- 
edy of  that  name  (1846),  a  Moor, 
captain  of  the  army  of  France  in  the 
war  against  Pisa.  He  loves  Florence; 
Florence  mistrusts  him.  The  Pisan 
general  Tiburzio  warns  him  that  the 
day  of  his  expected  victory  will  also 
be  that  of  his  condemnation,  offering 
him  the  Pisan  command  if  he  will 
leave  the  ungrateful  Florentines. 
True  to  the  end  Luria  leads  his 
troops  out  to  victory  and  then  swal- 
lows poison.  Tiburzio  meanwhile  is 
taken  captive  and  has  told  his  story. 
Luria  dies  surrounded  by  the  repent- 
ant captain  and  others  who  had  mis- 
trusted him — the  true  human  soul  in 
each  breaking  its  artificial  barriers, 
reaching  toward  and  doing  fealty  to 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  greater  spirit 
which  attracts  and  absorbs  their  own. 

Lycidas,  a  shepherd  in  Virgil's 
Third  Eclogue.  Hence  Milton  in  his 
poetical  monody,  Lycidas  (Novem- 
ber, 1637),  adopts  the  name  for  his 
friend  and  former  college  companion, 
Edward  King,  son  of  Sir  John  King, 
Secretary  for  Ireland,  who  was 
drowned  on  the  passage  from  Chester 
to  Ireland,  August  10,  1637. 


Lydgate 


243 


Lysimachus 


and  an  old  age  of  merited  niin  and 
beggary,  looks  upon  himself,  gravely 
and  in  good  faith,  as  a  wronged  and 
virtuous  gentleman — "  the  victim," 
as  he  is  made  to  say  on  his  own  title- 
page,  "  of  many  cruel  persecutions, 
conspiracies  and  slanders." 

As  Thackeray  paints  the  portrait  it  is 
worthy  to  hang  in  any  rogue's  gallery — as 
the  original  was  worthy  to  be  hanged  on  any 
scaflEold.  The  villain  double-dyed  is  very 
rare  in  modern  fiction,  and  Barry  Lyndon 
is  an  almost  incomparable  scoundrel,  who 
believes  in  himself,  tells  us  his  own  misdeeds, 
and  ever  proclaims  himself  a  very  fine  fellow 
— and  honestly  expects  us  to  take  him  at  his 
own  valuation,  while  all  our  knowledge  of 
his  evil  doings  is  derived  from  his  own 
self -laudatory  statements! — Brander  Mat- 
thews: The  Historical  Novel  and  other 
Essays,  p.  is 7. 

Lys,  Diane  de,  titular  heroine  of  a 
novel  by  Alexander  Dumas  fils  (1851), 
and  its  dramatization  (1853)  by  the 
author.  Married  for  her  money  by 
a  titled  libertine  and  busy  man  of 
affairs  who  neglects  her,  she  meets 
Paul  Aubrey,  a  young  sculptor  who 
has  amused  himself  with  facile  loves 
but  has  never  experienced  a  grande 
passion.  Both  have  ardent,  imagina- 
tive natures,  both  are  in  search  of 
some  one  on  whom  to  lavish  the 
wealth  of  their  affections.  The  in- 
evitable happens  with  tragic  con- 
sequences. 

Lysander,  in  Shakespeare's  A  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,  a  young  man 
of  Athens  who  flees  from  that  city 
with  Hermione,  closely  pursued  by 
Demetrius,  to  whom  Egeus,  the  lady's 
father,  has  betrothed  her.  Following 
Demetrius  is  another  lady,  Helena, 
who  is  madly  in  love  with  him.  The 
four  ill-assorted  lovers  fall  asleep  and 
dream  a  dream  about  the  fairy  court 
of  Oberon  and  Titania,  in  the  course 
of  which  Puck,  by  means  of  a  magic 
herb  known  as  "Love-in-idleness,"  re- 
arranges matters  in  a  thoroughly 
satisfactory  manner.  ^  Demetrius 
wakes  to  find  himself  in  love  with 
Helena  and  out  of  love  with  Her- 
mione. Egeus,  arriving  in  quest  of 
the  fugitives,  accepts  the  situation. 

Lysimachus,  in  Shakespeare's  com- 
edy, Pericles,  Prince  of  Tyre  (1608), 
the  governor  of  Medaline  who  marries 
Marina. 


Lydgate,  Dr.,  in  George  Eliot's 
Middlemarch,  an  enthusiast  ruined  by 
an  imfortimate  marriage.  At  twenty- 
seven  he  comes  to  Middlemarch  with 
high  aims.  He  marries  Rosamond 
Vincy,  pretty,  petty,  obstinate,  self- 
willed.  The  paradise  of  sweet  laughs 
and  blue  eyes  over  which  he  has 
dreamed  since  he  first  met  her  proves 
a  disastrous  disillusion.  At  the  age 
of  forty  Dr.  Lydgate,  of  magnificent 
possibilities,  is  thoroughly  ^  disen- 
chanted. Instead  of  completing  the 
unfinished  work  of  his  ideal,  one 
Doctor  Bichat,  he  has  become  a 
fashionable  physician  at  bathing 
places,  and  distinguished  himself  by 
writing  a  treatise  on  the  gout.  In 
the  prime  of  Ufe,  his  hair  still  brown, 
now  and  then  conscious  of  visitations 
from  his  earlier  self,  he  closes  his 
career. 

The  skill  with  which  Lydgate's  gradual 
abandonment  of  his  lofty  aims  is  worked 
out  without  making  him  simply  contempti- 
ble forces  us  to  recognize  the  truthfulness  of 
the  conception.  It  is  an  inimitable  study 
of  such  a  fascination  as  the  snake  is  supposed 
to  exert  upon  the  bird;  the  slow,  reluctant 
surrender,  step  by  step,  of  the  higher  nature 
to  the  lower,  in  consequence  of  weakness 
which  is  at  least  perfectly  intelligible. — 
Sir  Leslie  Stephen:    George  Eliot. 

Lygia,  in  H.  Sienkiewicz's  historical 
romance.  Quo  Vadis  (1897),  a  beau- 
tiful Christian  maiden  living  in  the 
household  of  Aulus  Plautius,  a  Roman 
noble  during  the  reign  of  Nero. 
Vinicius,  one  of  the  emperor's  guards, 
lays  siege  to  her  virtue  and,  being 
repeatedly  foiled,  denounces  her  as 
a  Christian.  She  is  exposed  to  the 
wild  beasts  in  the  amphitheatre,  is 
saved  therefrom  by  her  attendant 
Ursus,  a  gigantic  savage,  and  ends 
by  marrying  Vinicius,  who  has  been 
converted  to  Christianitv  by  the 
preaching  of  St.  Peter  anci  St.  Paul. 

Lyndon,  Barry,  the  autobiographic 
hero  of  The  Memoirs  of  Barry  Lyndon 
(1844),  a  satirical  romance  of  the 
picaresqueorder  by  W.  M.Thackeray. 
His  real  name  is  Redmond  fiarry;-the 
name  Lyndon  he  assumes  on  his 
marriage.  Telling  his  own  story,  he 
frankly  reveals  himself  as  an  unmiti- 
gated blackguard,  a  profligate,  a 
gambler  and  a  sharper,  who,  after  a 
riotous  youth,  a  marihood  of  infamy 


Macaire 


244 


Macbeth 


M 


Macaire,  Robert,  at  one  time  a 
generic  name  for  any  French  chevalier 
d'indusirie  whose  characteristics  ran 
the  gamut  from  petty  vice  and  poHti- 
cal  chicanery  to  the  gravest  crimes 
against  law  and  order.     The  term 
doubtless  originated  with  the  cheva- 
lier Richard  (not  Robert)  de  Macaire, 
who  in    137 1    murdered  Aubrey  de 
Montdidier  in  the  Forest  of  Bondi, 
Paris.    The  assassin  was  apprehended 
on  suspicions  aroused  by  the  conduct 
of  Montdidier 's  faithful  dog,  Dragon, 
which  had  witnessed  the  attack.    In 
1 8 14  the  story  was  put  into  a  play  by 
Pixericourt,    The  Dog  of   Montargis 
{q.v.)y  which  was  later  rehabilitated 
with    the    dog    feature    omitted,    in 
L'Auberge   des    Adrets    (see   below). 
Here  Macaire  was  recreated  as  a  bold, 
humorous    and    reckless    thief    and 
murderer.      Just    about    this    time 
Daumier,  the  famous  caricaturist  of 
the   Paris    Charivari,   borrowed   the 
name  for  a  series  of  sketches  in  which 
Robert  Macaire  was  successively  de- 
picted as  a  banker,  an  advocate,  a 
journalist,  etc.,  in  whom  were  personi- 
fied   perverseness,    impudence,    and 
charlatanism.    They  were  remarkable 
as  portraitures  of  abstract  qualities, 
and  it  is  largely  owing  to  their  favor- 
able reception  on  the  part  of  a  good- 
natured    public    that    Daumier  has 
come  to  be  known  in  later  times  as 
the   "  Aristophanes  of  French  cari- 
cature." And  in  this  way  Robert  Ma- 
caire came  t6  be  the  sportive  designa- 
tion of  a  certain  class  of  Frenchmen. 
Macaire,  Robert,  the  leading  char- 
acter in  a  French  melodrama,  L'Au- 
berge des  Adrets,  by  Benjamin  An  tier 
and  Saint  Amand.     The  plot  turns 
on  a  murder  committed  at  a  wayside 
inn     by     the     adventurer,     Robert 
Macaire,  the  blame  of  which  is  thrown 
on  a  poor  woman  passing  the  night 
there  who  is  eventually  found  to  be 
the  murderer's  neglected  wife.    Fred- 
erick Lemaitre,  the  greatest  French 
actor  of  his  day,  saw  that  the  leading 
characters  in  the  story  would  admit 
of  bein^  treated  from  a  humorous 
standpomt.    Associating  himself  with 


the  original  authors  he  turned  the 
melodrama  into  an  extravaganza 
entitled  simply  Robert  Macaire,  whose 
satirical  strictures  upon  political  and 
commercial  chicanery  were  entirely 
foreign  to  the  original  conception, 
and  so  had  a  success  of  a  different 
character  as  an  exposure  of  passing 
vices  and  follies.  Although  Lemai- 
tre's  treatment  of  Macaire  was  purely 
farcical  he  found  opportunities  for 
emitting  real  flashes  of  tragical  genius, 
so  striking,  so  terrifying  indeed  that 
his  capacity  for  throwing  himself 
with  overwhelming  force  into  a  situa- 
tion was  completely  established. 

McAndrews,  who  exploits  himself 
in  McAndrews  Hymn,  by  Rudyard 
Kipling,  a  Scottish  engineer  who  loved 
his  engine  with  something  of  the  same 
irreverent  reverence  that  he  bestowed 
upon  his  God. 

Macbeth,  King  of  Scotland  in 
Shakespeare's  tragedy  of  that  name, 
is  introduced  in  Sc.  i,  3,  where  he 
meets  the  witches;  murders  Duncan, 
II,  I ,  and  succeeds  him  as  king ;  causes 
the  murder  of  Bangno,  III,  i,  and  of 
Macduff's  family,  iv,  i ,  2 ;  meets  the 
English  army  at  Dusinane,  Act  V,  and 
is  slain  by  Macduff,  v,  8.  According 
to  authentic  history  he  was  not  killed 
at  Dusinane,  but  at  Lumphanan 
two  years  later  (1057) .  Furthermore, 
he  appears  to  have  been  a  benign  and 
beneficent  ruler.  In  the  play  Lady 
Macbeth  complains  of  him  (I,  5)  that 
he  is  "  too  full  of  the  milk  of  human 
kindness,"  and  indeed  it  is  only  his 
wife's  influence  that  decides  his  first 
murder  and  later  that  of  Banquo. 
Struggling  with  remorse  of  conscience 
he  confuses  it,  as  Coleridge  says,  with 
the  feeling  of  insecurity  and  plunges 
into  more  crimes  in  order  to  safeguard 
himself  against  the  results  of  the  first. 

Macbeth  himself  appears  driven  along 
by  the  violence  of  his  fate,  like  a  vessel 
drifting  before  the  storm.  He  is  not  equal 
to  the  struggle  between  fate  and  conscience. 
In  thought  he  is  absent  and  perplexed, 
sudden  and  desperate  in  act,  from  a  dis- 
trust of  his  own  resolution.  His  energy 
sprinirs  from  the  anxiety  and  agitation  of 
his  mind.  His  blindly  rushing  forward  on 
the  objects  of  his  ambition  or  rev»nge,  and 


Macbeth 


245 


MacFlecknoe 


his  recoiling  from  them  equally  betray  the 
harassed  state  of  his  feelings.  This  part  of 
his  character  is  admirably  set  off  by  being 
brought  in  connection  with  that  of  Lady 
Macbeth,  whose  obdurate  strength  of  will 
and  masculine  firmness  give  her  the  ascend- 
ancy over  her  husband's  faltering  virtue. 
She  at  once  seizes  the  opportunity  that 
offers  for  the  accomplishment  of  their 
wished-for  greatness,  and  never  flinches 
from  her  object  till  all  is  over. — HAaurr: 
Characters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays. 

Macbeth,  Lady,  in  Shakespeare's 
Macbeth,  the  hero's  consort  who  impels 
him  to  crime  the  moment  she  hears  of 
the  witch's  prophecy  that  he  shall 
succeed  Duncan  as  King  of  Scotland. 

The  magnitude  of  her  resolution  almost 
covers  the  magnitude  of  her  guilt.  She  is  a 
great  bad  woman,  whom  we  hate,  but  whom 
we  fear  more  than  we  hate.  She  does  not 
excite  our  loathing  or  abhorrence,  like 
Regan  and  Gonnerill.  She  is  only  wicked 
to  gain  a  great  end;  and  is,  perhaps,  more 
distinguished  by  her  commanding  presence 
of  mind  and  inexorable  self-will,  which  do 
not  suflEer  her  to  be  diverted  from  a  bad 
purpose,  when  once  formed,  by  weak  and 
womanly  regrets,  than  by  the  hardness  of 
her  heart,  or  want  of  natural  affections. — 
Hazlitt:    Characters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays. 

Macbride,  Miss  {nee  McBride), 
heroine  of  a  satirical  poem,  The  Proud 
Miss  Machride,  by  John  G.  Saxe.  She 
was  "  terribly  proud  "  of  everything 
concerning  herself;  though  her 
boasted  "  high-birth  "  was  under  a 
skylight,  and  though  her  Phoenix - 
like  rise  had  been  from  the  ashes  of  a 
chandlery.  She  scorned  a  fractional 
tailor,  was  "up  to  snuff"  with  a 
tobacconist  and  "  nonsuited "  an 
attorney,  but  accepted  the  plausible 
and  worthless  fortune  htmter  "  dap- 
per Jim."  •  Her  pride  had  its  fall; 
instead  of  "  reversion  "  came  "  re- 
verses;" lover  and  friends  fled;  the 
vulgar  mocked;  and  Miss  Macbride 
was  left  alone  in  her  sorrow. 
-  Macduff,  thane  of  Fife  in  the  time 
of  Edward  the  Confessor,  figures 
anachronistically  in  Shakespeare's 
Macbeth.  One  of  the  witches  had 
warned  Macbeth  to  beware  of  the 
thane  of  Fife,  another  had  added  that 
"  none  of  woman  bom  should  have 
power  to  harm  him."  In  England 
Macduff  raised  an  army  to  dethrone 
Macbeth,  who  having  attacked  his 
castle  and  slain  his  wife  and  all  his 
children,  meets  him  at  last  face  to 
face  on  the  fatal  field  at  Dusinane. 


Macbeth  tauntingly  repeats  the 
witch's  prophecy.  Macduff  retorts 
that  he  was  not  bom  of  woman,  but 
"  was  from  his  mother's  womb, 
untimely  ripped."  Seeing  all  hope 
lost,  Macbeth  boldly  cries: 

Lay  on  Macduff 
And  damned   be  he   who  first  cries  Hold! 
Enough! 

They  fight  and  Macbeth  is  slain. 

MacFarlaine,  Ailie,  in  Mrs.  Oli- 
phant's  novel.  The  Minister's  Wife 
(1869),  a  Scotch  lassie,  with  golden 
hair  and  mystical  blue  eyes  and  a 
delicate,  half  hectic  color,  who  is 
converted  at  a  revival  and  whom  a 
brother  enthusiast,  a  newly  reformed 
sinner,  claims  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord,  urging  her  to  become  his  bride 
and  help  him  to  convert  the  world. 

It  is  not  easy  to  depict  the  visions  which 
sweep  across  the  mental  eye  of  one  whose 
brain  religious  enthusiasm  has  almost 
crazed,  without  rendering  them  ludicrous, 
but  there  is  unmixed  pathos  in  the  picture 
which  Mrs.  Oliphant  has  drawn  of  this  poor 
Lowland  maiden  as  she  knelt  before  the  open 
Bible  on  her  bed,  and  remained  there  lost 
"in  one  long  trance  of  prayer  and  reverie, 
while  the  short  autumn  day  came  to  an  end, 
and  the  twilight  closed  around  her, "collecting 
her  energies  in  order  that  she  might  submit 
to  the  marriage  which  she  dreaded  far  more 
than  she  would  have  feared  the  scaffold  or 
the  stake. — Saturday  Review,  July  3,  1869. 

McFlngal,  hero  of  John  Tmmbull's 
McFingal,  a  political  satire  in  Hudi- 
brastic  verse  (i 774-1 782),  which  deals 
with  the  events  of  the  American 
Revolution  and  finds  matter  for 
humor  in  both  Whig  and  Tory, — but 
especially  the  latter.  McFingal,  a 
New  England  Scotchman,  represents 
the  British  and  the  Tories,  Honorius 
the  Whigs  and  the  patriots.  After 
undergoing  many  ludicrous  adven- 
tures, and  getting  the  worst  of  every 
argument,  McFingal  is  hoisted  to  the 
top  of  a  flagpole  and  let  down  again 
to  receive  a  coat  of  tar  and  feathers. 
The  most  famous  lines  in  the  poem 
are  frequently  quoted  as  coming  from 
Hudibras, 

No  thief  e'er  felt  the  halter  draw 
With  good  opinion  of  the  law. 

MacFlecknoe  {i.e.,  son  of  Flecknoe), 
the  name  under  which  Dryden  cari- 
catured his  rival  Thomas  Shadwell 
(1640-1692)  in  a  satirical  poem,  Mac- 


McFUmsy 


246 


Mclvor 


Flecknoe,  or  a  Satire  on  the  True  Blue 
Protestant  Poet  T.  S.  (1682).  Rich- 
ard Flecknoe  was  an  Irishman  who 
had  died  in  1678.  Though  he  had 
done  some  good  work  in  prose  and 
verse,  he  had  been  the  butt  of  Andrew 
Marvell  and  was  accepted  by  his 
English  contemporaries  as  a  typical 
dullard.  His  character  was  estimated 
perhaps  from  his  repeated  failures  as 
a  dramatist.  This  man  is  depicted 
by  Dryden  as  the  king  of  "  the  realm 
of  nonsense,"  conscious  of  his  ap- 
proaching end  and  anxious  for  the 
election  of  his  successor.  In  a  strain 
of  ludicrous  panegyric,  he  discusses 
the  grounds  of  his  son  Shad  well's 
claims  to  the  vacant  throne.  He 
reflects  with  pride  on  the  exact  simi- 
larity, as  well  in  genius  as  in  tastes 
and  features,  which  exists  between 
himself  and  his  hopeful  boy.  Shad- 
well's  coronation  is  then  described 
with  more  humor  than  is  common 
with  Dryden,  though  the  conclusion 
of  the  poem  evinces  a  sudden  change 
from  banter  to  ferocity,  and  betrays 
the  bitterness  of  the  feelings  which 
had  prompted  it.  This  admirable 
satire — to  which  Pope  was  indebted 
for  the  plot  of  the  Dunciad — is  cer- 
tainly to  be  numbered  among  Dry- 
den's  most  successful  efforts. 

McFlimsy,  Miss  Flora,  heroine  of 
Nothing  to  Wear,  a  satirical  poem  by 
William  Allen  Butler.  A  dweller  in 
Madison  Square,  then  the  fashionable 
headquarters  of  New  York  City,  she 
is  the  discontented  and  indeed  deso- 
late possessor  of  extravagant  gowns 
and  jewelry  and  native  and  foreign 
finery,  but  still  insists  that  she  has 
nothing  to  wear. 

Macheath,  Captain,  in  The  Beggar's 
Opera  (1728),  by  John  Gay,  a  hand- 
some, reckless  ruffian  adored  by  the 
ladies  and  feared  by  all  men  save  the 
accomplices  who  share  his  booty.  He 
is  married  to  Polly  Peacham  whom 
he  really  loves  and  who  loves  him  in 
return,  but  this  does  not  prevent  his 
paying  attentions  to  Lucy  Lockit  and 
other  beauties.  It  is  Macheath  who 
sings  the  famous  song, 

How  happy  could  I  be  with  either 
Were  t'other  dear  charmer  away. 


Betrayed  by  Polly's  father  he  is 
lodged  in  Newgate  gaol.  His  es- 
cape, recapture,  trial,  condemnation 
to  death  and  reprieve  make  up  other 
episodes  in  his  career  which  ends 
with  his  making  Polly  a  promise  that 
he  will  be  true  to  her  for  the  rest  of 
his  life. 

Maclan,  Gilchrist,  in  Scott's  his- 
torical novel,  The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth, 
the  chief  of  Clan  Quhele.  Just  before 
the  birth  of  Eachin  Maclan  (see 
below)  he  had  lost  seven  sons  in 
battle  with  Clan  Chattan,  ominous 
prophecies  had  induced  him  to 
apprentice  the  eighth  son  to  Simon 
Glover.  Eighteen  years  later  he 
suffered  himself  to  be  persuaded  that 
Eachin's  presence  was  necessary  to 
ensure  the  defeat  of  Clan  Chattan  by 
Clan  Quhele.  Luckily  he  died  before 
witnessing  his  son's  disgrace. 

Maclan,  Ian  Eachin  {i.e.,  Hector), 
in  Scott's  historical  romance  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  The  Fair  Maid  of 
Perth  (1828).  Son  of  Gilchrist  Mac- 
lan (supra)  he  was  "  born  under  a 
bush  of  holly  and  suckled  by  a  white 
doe,"  and  under  the  name  of  Cona- 
char  was  brought  up  in  obscurity  as 
Simon  Glover's  apprentice.  He  is 
the  rival  of  Henry  Gow  for  the  hand 
of  Catharine  Glover,  but  is  afflicted 
with  **  a  quick  fancy  that  overesti- 
mates danger  "  and  is  acutely  con- 
scious of  his  own  faint-heartedness. 
Nevertheless  he  bears  himself  gal- 
lantly in  the  struggle  with  Clan 
Chattan  until  he  is  left  alone  face  to 
face  with  his  deadly  enemy,  Henry 
Gow.  Then  "  his  heart  sickened,  his 
eyes  darkened,  his  ears  tingled,  his 
brain  turned  giddy  "  and  he  igno- 
miniously  fled  from  the  field.  In  his 
tenderness  towards  this  involuntary 
coward,  Scott  expiated  the  harshness 
he  had  visited  on  a  ne'er-do-well 
brother  Thomas,  who  had  shown  the 
white  feather  in  the  West  Indies. 
This  harshness  he  subsequently 
repented. 

Mclvor,  Fergus  (called  also  Vich 
Ian  Vohr),  in  Scott's  novel,  Waverley 
(18 14),  the  chief  of  Glennaquoich,  a 
gallant  Highland  Jacobite  of  fiery 
temper  and  uncompromising  loyalty. 


Mclvor 


247 


Macleod  of  Dare 


He  is  the  brother  of  Flora  Mclvor, 
with  whom  Edward  Waverley  is  in 
love. 

Fergus  Maclvor  has  a  much  more  pos- 
sible prototype  in  Colonel  Alexander 
Ranaldson  Macdonnell  of  Glengarry,  one  of 
the  most  typical  Celts  of  his  race.  His 
pride  and  heat  of  temper  were  quite  equal 
to  those  of  the  hero  of  fiction.  He  wis  the 
last  Highland  chief  who  really  kept  up  the 
state  and  customs  of  ancient  gaeldom  to 
their  full  extent.  When  he  travelled  he  did 
so  as  a  Gaelic  prince,  with  a  full  retinue  of 
kilted  attendants,  not  a  single  articulus  lack- 
ing of  a  Highland  chieftain's  tail.  He  was 
a  great  friend  of  Scott's,  who  writes  of  him 
in  glowing  terms  (see  Lockhart).  On  14 
January,  1828,  he  was  killed  in  the  attempt 
to  get  ashore  from  the  wrecked  steamer 
Stirling  Castle.  His  grand  ideas  about  the 
state  of  a  Macdonald  chief  helped  to  em- 
barrass the  estates,  the  whole  of  which  were 
sold  partly  in  his  son's  and  partly  in  his 
grandson's  time. — S.  R.  Crockett:  The 
Scott  Originals. 

Mclvor,  Flora,  in  Waverley,  the 
sister  of  Fergus,  and  like  him  de- 
votedly attached  to  the  house  of 
Stuart  and  the  Catholic  religion.  In 
her  unswerving  loyalty  to  an  unpop- 
ular faith  and  a  losing  cause,  a 
loyalty  which  though  "  wildly  en- 
thusiastic "  "  burnt  pure  and  un- 
mixed with  any  selfish  feeling,"  in 
her  passionate  attachment  to  prin- 
ciple and  her  final  renunciation  of 
woman's  tenderest  prerogatives  she 
anticipates  Rebecca  of  York.  After 
a  touching  farewell  scene  with  Waver- 
ley she  retires  to  the  convent  of  the 
Scotch  Benedictine  nuns  in  Paris. 
One  incident  embodied  in  the  novel 
really  happened  to  a  fair  Jacobite 
friend  of  the  author,  a  Miss  Naime. 
As  the  Highland  army  rushed  into 
Edinburgh  Miss  Nairne,  like  other 
Tory  ladies,  stood  waving  her  hand- 
kerchief from  ^  a  balcony.  A  ball, 
accidentally  discharged,  grazed  her 
forehead.  "  Thank  God,"  she  said, 
on  recovering  her  senses,  "  that  the 
accident  happened  to  me  whose 
principles  are  known.  Had  it  befallen 
a  Whig  they  would  have  said  it  was 
done  on  purpose." 

Mackaye,  Saunders,  a  leading 
character  in  Charles  Kingsley's  novel, 
Alton  Locke  (1850),  obviously  drawn 
from  his  intimate  friend,  Thomas 
Carlyle. 


He  has  some  real  humor,  a  quality  in 
which  Kingsley  was  for  the  most  part 
curiously  deficient;  but  one  must  suspect 
that  in  this  case  he  was  drawing  from  an 
original.  It  is  interesting  to  read  Mr.  Car- 
lyle's  criticism  of  this  part  of  the  book. 
"Saunders  Mackaye,"  he  says  (Life,  vol.  i, 

E.  244),  "my  invaluable  countryman  in  this 
ook,  is  nearly  perfect;  indeed,  I  greatly 
wonder  how  you  did  contrive  to  manage 
him.  His  very  dialect  is  as  if  a  native  had 
done  it,  and  the  whole  existence  of  the  rug- 
ged old  hero  is  a  wonderfully  splendid  and 
coherent  piece  of  Scotch  bravura."  Perhaps 
an  explanation  of  the  wonder  might  be  sug- 
gested to  other  people  more  easily  than  to 
Mr.  Carlyle;  but  at  any  rate  Mackaye  is  a 
very  felicitous  centre  for  the  various  groups 
who  play  their  parts  in  the  story. — Leslie 
Stephen:    Hours  in  a  Library. 

Mackenzie,  Sheila,  heroine  of  The 
Princess  of  Thule,  by  William  Black 
(1874),  who  receives  that  nickname 
because  her  father  rules  unquestioned 
over  the  fisher  peasants  of  "  Borva," 
the  remotest  of  the  Hebrides  isles. 
"  The  girl,"  we  are  told,  "  was  some- 
how the  product  of  all  the  beautiful 
aspects  of  nature  around  her.  It  was 
the  sea  that  was  in  her  eyes,  it  was 
the  fair  sunlight  that  shone  in  her 
face,  the  breath  of  her  life  was  the 
breath  of  the  Moorland  winds." 
Lavender,  an  artist,  clever  and  attrac- 
tive, but  something  of  a  snob,  trans- 
plants this  delicate  northern  flower 
to  the  hot-house  air  of  London,  where 
she  pines  and  withers  until  his  neglect 
drives  her  to  escape  back  to  the  free- 
dom of  her  natural  life, — only  to  find 
that  its  brightness  and  contentment 
have  flown.  Her  loss  startles  Laven- 
der into  recognition  of  his  better  self 
and  she  succeeds  in  making  him  a 
true  man. 

Macleod,  Colin  or  Cawdie,  in 
Richard  Cimiberland's  comedy.  The 
Fashionable  Lover  (1780),  a  Scotch 
servant  in  the  employ  of  Lord  Abber- 
ville,  who  supervises  the  household 
finances  with  such  strict  economy  and 
integrity  that  he  earns  the  hatred  of 
his  fellow  domestics  and  eventually 
checks  his  young  master  on  the  road 
to  ruin.  Cumberland's  avowed  object 
in  drawing  this  portrait  was  "  to  weed 
out  the  unmanly  prejudice  of  English- 
men against  the  Scotch." 

Macleod  of  Dare,  Sir  Keith,  hero 
of  MacLeod  of  Dare,  a  novel  by  Wil- 


Macquart 


248 


Maitland 


liam  Black  (1878),  a  Highland  chief, 
intense,  untamed  and  passionate,  yet 
fine-strung  and  chivalrous,  spending 
most  of  his  time  in  Scotland  with  a 
chorus  of  wild  retainers,  yet  occa- 
sionally lured  to  London.  Here  he 
wrecks  his  happiness  by  a  misplaced 
passion  for  Gertrude  White,  a  fine  and 
fickle  lady,  an  actress  spoiled  by 
adulation.  His  dethroned  and  dis- 
tempered reason  prepares  for  both 
betrayer  and  victim  a  shocking 
catastrophe. 

Macquart,  Gervaise,  heroine  of 
Zola's  novel,  V Assomoir  (1877),  who 
reappears  in  others  of  the  Rougon 
Macquart  series.  At  fourteen,  and 
already  a  mother,  she  was  driven 
from  her  home  and  accompanies  her 
lover  to  Paris.  He  deserts  her  and 
two  children.  She  marries  Coupeau, 
a  tinsmith.  At  first  they  are  happy, 
but  poverty  and  vice  disintegrate 
what  might  have  been  a  family  into 
mere  units  of  misery,  wretchedness 
and  corruption.  Zola  pitilessly  traces 
their  downfall. 

MacSarcasm,  Sir  Archy,  in  C. 
Macklin's  comedy,  Love  d  la  Mode 
(1779),  a  Scotch  knight  especially 
proud  of  his  descent.  He  tells  Char- 
lotte Goodchild  whom  he  is  wooing 
that  *'  in  the  house  of  MacSarcasm 
are  twa  barons,  three  viscoimts,  six 
earls,  one  marquisate,  and  twa  dukes, 
besides  baronets  and  lairds  oot  o'  a' 
reckoning."  Believing  that  Charlotte 
has  lost  her  fortune  he  repents  of  his 
wooing  and  informs  her  that  he  has 
just  received  letters  "  frae  the  dukes, 
the  marquis,  and  a'  the  dignitaries  of 
the  family  expressly  prohibiting  my 
contaminating  the  blood  of  Macsar- 
casm  wi'  ony thing  sprung  from  a 
hogshead  or  a  coonting  house." 

MacSycophant,  Sir  Pertinax,  in 
Macklin's  comedy.  The  Man  of  the 
World  (1764),  a  hard,  practical, 
shrewd  and  worldly  old  Scotchman, 
ambitious  for  his  son's  sake  rather 
than  for  his  own  and  careless  of  how 
sordid  or  disgraceful  the  means 
wherebv  his  ambitions  may  be 
realized. 

Madeline,  heroine  of  Keats's  nar- 
rative poem,  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes 


(1820).  The  poem  is  based  on  the 
old  superstition  that  if  a  maiden  goes 
to  bed  supperless  on  the  vigil  of  St. 
Agnes'  feast  she  will  see  her  destined 
husband  on  awaking.  Madeline,  in 
love  with  Porphyro,_  tries  this  spell 
and  Porphyro,  obtaining  surreptitious 
access  to  her  virgin  bower,  watches 
her  reverently  till  she  sinks  in  slum- 
ber, arranges  a  dainty  dessert  by  her 
couch,  and  gently  arousing  her  with 
a  favorite  air,  persuades  her  to  steal 
from  the  castle  under  his  protection. 

Maimuna,  in  Southey's  epic, 
Thalaba  (Books  vii-ix),  an  old 
woman  whom  Thalaba  finds  spinning 
in  her  house  in  Kaf.  Expressing 
surprise  at  the  extreme  fineness  of 
her  thread  he  was  invited  to  break  it 
if  he  could.  Incredulously  Thalaba 
wound  it  around  his  wrists,  but  found 
it  impossible  to  disentangle  it  again 
and  became  utterly  powerless.  Mai- 
muna  with  the  help  of  her  sister 
Khwala  conveyed  him  helpless  to  the 
island  of  Mohareb.  Later  she  re- 
pented, turned  to  Allah  and  liberated 
Thalaba. 

Maison  Rouge,  Chevalier  de  Qiter- 
ally  the  Knight  of  the  Red  House), 
hero  and  title  of  a  romance  by  Alex- 
ander Dumas.  A  young  French 
nobleman,  the  chevalier  is  incited  by 
chivalric  love  for  Marie  Antoinette 
to  a  heroic  plan  for  liberating  her 
from  the  Tower.  By  an  tmfortimate 
combination  of  circumstances  he 
arrives  just  in  time  to  frustrate  a 
better  plot  conceived  by  cooler  heads, 
and  willingly  allows  himself^  to  be 
slain  by  the  baffled  conspirators. 
G.  LeNotre,  in  The  Real  Maison 
Rouge  (1894),  shows  that  this  hot- 
headed youth  was  in  actual  life  known 
as  A.  D.  J.  Gonze  de  Rougeville.  He 
did  take  a  bold  part  in  the  attempts 
to  free  Marie  Antoinette,  but  he  was 
a  less  chivalric  person  than  his  double 
in  fiction.  In  fact  he  was  an  impostor 
of  plebeian  birth  who  usurped  the 
name  of  de  Rougeville.  Nor  was  he 
a  victim  of  the  Revolution.  He  sur- 
vived until  1 8 14. 

Maitland,  Dean,  hero  of  The 
Silence  of  Dean  Maitland  (1886),  a 
novel   by   "  Maxwell   Grey  "  ,  (Miss 


Malagigi 


249 


Maltravers 


M.  G.  Tuttiell).  As  a  young  curate 
the  future  dignitary  of  the  Church  of 
England  had  seduced  a  girl,  com- 
mitted manslaughter  to  avoid  the 
consequences,  and  allowed  an  inno- 
cent friend  to  be  condemned  to  penal 
servitude  on  circumstantial  evidence. 
Despite  severe  twinges  of  conscience 
Maitland  had  led  a  good  and  useful 
life  until  the  friend  is  released  from 
prison  and  unconditionally  forgives 
him,  when  he  makes  public  confession 
and  dies. 

Malagigi  (the  Italian  form  of  the 
French  Maugis),  in  Ariosto's  Orlando 
Furioso  (1516),  one  of  Charlemagne's 
paladins,  brother  of  Aldiger  and 
Vivian  and  cousin  to  Rinaldo.  He 
was  brought  up  by  the  fairy  Oriana, 
and  in  his  turn  became  a  famous 
magician. 

Malagrowther,  Sir  Malachi,  the 
feigned  author  of  a  series  of  letters 
contributed  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  to  the 
Edinburgh  Weekly  Journal  in  1826. 
Their  object  was  to  antagonize  a  pro- 
posal by  the  British  government  that 
the  circulation  of  bank  notes  in 
Scotland  should  be  restricted  to  those 
of  £5  or  more.  Lockhart  assures  us 
that  "these  diatribes  produced  in 
Scotland  a  sensation  not  inferior  to 
that  of  the  Drapier  letters  in  Ire- 
land." What  is  more  to  the  point 
they  defeated  the  proposed  measure. 

Malagrowther,  Sir  Mungo,  in 
Scott's  historical  romance,  The  For- 
tunes of  Nigel,  a  crabbed  old  courtier 
whose  natural  peevishness  is  increased 
by  his  misfortunes.  He  takes  delight 
in  making  everybody  as  unhappy  as 
himself. 

Malbecco,  in  Spenser's  Faery  Queen 
(Book  III,  ix,  10),  designed  to  repre- 
sent the  self-inflicted  torments  of 
jealousy. 

The  sight  could  jealous  pangs  beguile. 
And  charm  Malbecco's  cares  awhile. 

Sir  W.  Scott. 

Malcolm,  in  Shakespeare's  Macbeth. 
A  son  of  Duncan. 

Malefort,  in  Massinger's  Unnatural 
Combat,  an  incestuous  ruffian  who 
pays  the  penalty  of  his  crimes  by 
direct  interposition  from  heaven.  The 


character  is  probably  modelled  on 
that  of  the  Italian  villain  Francesco 
Cenci  (q.v.). 

Malfi,  Duchess  of,  heroine  of  a 
tragedy  of  that  name  by  John  Web- 
ster {circa  161 8).  Her  marriage  to 
her  steward  Antonio  Bologna  mad- 
dens her  brothers  when  they  discover 
the  secret.  One,  a  cardinal,  hires 
Bosola  to  slay  Antonio.  A  more 
terrible  end  for  the  Duchess  is  planned 
by  her  twin  brother  Ferdinand,  Duke 
of  Calabria.  He  calls  upon  her  in  a 
darkened  room,  pretends  to  be  recon- 
ciled, then  suddenly  uncovers  three 
waxen  figures  smeared  with  blood 
whom  she  takes  for  her  slaughtered 
children  and  husband.  After  having 
sufiiciently  feasted  on  her  mental  tor- 
tures, Ferdinand  sends  a  troop  of 
madmen  into  her  room  who  leap  and 
howl  around  her.  Then  follow  the 
executioners,  with  a  gravedigger  and 
a  cofi&n,  who  sing  a  mournful  dirge 
before  they  strangle  her.  The  two 
children  are  likewise  strangled. 

Mall,  Mistress,  alluded  to  in 
Shakespeare's  Twelfth  Night,  i,  3,  a 
famous  thief  and  murderess  who 
dressed  in  man's  clothing  and  infested 
Hounslow  Heath.  Her  chief  exploit 
was  the  robbery  of  General  Fairfax, 
for  which  she  was  sent  to  Newgate. 
Her  real  name  was  Mary  Frith. 
Under  the  nickname  of  Moll  Cutpurse 
she  is  the  heroine  of  The  Roaring  Girl 
(161 1)  by  Middleton  and  Decker. 

Mallinger,  Sir  Hugo,  in  Daniel 
Deronda,  represents  the  aristocracy  in 
the  form  most  indulgently  viewed  by 
George  Eliot — that  of  a  wealthy,  easy 
country  gentleman  of  ancient  descent 
and  large  means;  but,  as  a  comfort- 
able, easy  aristocrat  must  be  either 
stupid  or  malignant,  he  is  character- 
ized by  "  that  dulness  towards  what 
may  be  going  on  in  other  minds,  espe- 
cially the  minds  of  children,  which  is 
among  the  commonest  deficiencies 
even  in  good-natured  men  like  him, 
when  life  has  been  generally  easy  to 
themselves,  and  their  energies  have 
been  quietly  spent  in  feeling 
gratified." 

Maltravers,  Ernest,  hero  of  a  novel 
of    that   name    (1837)    by   Bulwer- 


Malvolio 


250 


Man 


Lytton,  and  its  sequel,  Alice ^  or  the 
Mysteries.  He  is  put  forward  as  the 
type  of  genius.  At  eighteen  a  marvel 
of  precocious  wisdom  and  learning, 
he  comes  home  from  a  brilliant  uni- 
versity career  in  Germany,  meets  a 
burglar's  daughter,  the  beautiful  and 
unsophisticated  Alice,  and  lives  with 
her  until  the  burglar  reclaims  her. 
He  falls  in  love  with  other  ladies, 
married  and  unmarried;  enlarges  his 
mind  by  foreign  travel;  becomes 
famous  in  London  as  a  poet,  and  is 
afifianced  to  Lady  Florence  Lascelles, 
a  kindred  genius,  a  beauty  and  an 
heiress.  She  dies;  he  transfers  his 
affections  to  a  mysterious  young 
woman,  Evelyn  Cameron;  she  turns 
out  to  be  the  daughter  of  the  long 
lost  Alice — presumably  by  himself. 
He  is  in  despair.  Eventually  every- 
thing is  cleared  up.  Alice's  daughter 
had  died,  and  Evelyn  had  been  sub- 
stituted in  her  place  byLord  Vargrave, 
who  had  married  Alice  and  died. 
Evelyn  is  happily  disposed  of  to  a 
colonel  in  the  army;  Maltravers  is 
free  to  return  to  Alice. 

Malvolio,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
Twelfth  Nighty  steward  to  Olivia, 
solemn,  pompous  and  puritanical,  an 
easy  butt  for  practical  jokes. 

The  analogy  between  Malvolio  and  Don 
Quixote  occurs  inevitably.  For  both  were 
men  of  lofty  bearing,  cursed  with  an  exag- 
gerated sense  of  their  missions,  and  in  both 
of  them  this  sense  was  used  by  irreverent 
creatures  to  entice  them  into  ludicrous 
plights.  But  the  analogy  does  not  go 
further  than  that.  I  cannot  subscribe  to 
Charles  Lamb's  ingenious  paradox  that 
Malvolio  was  in  himself  a  fine  fellow,  whose 
dignified  bearing  had  solid  basis  in  a  digni- 
fied nature.  Malvolio  does  not,  indeed,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  play,  say  anything 
which  would  contradict  this  theory.  But 
that  is  due  to  Shakespeare's  slap-dash  tech- 
nique. Shdkespeare's  real  opinion  of  Mal- 
volio is  shown  in  the  words  which  he  puts 
into  the  mouth  of  Olivia:  "O,  you  are  sick 
of  self-love,"  etc.  Malvolio  is  meant  to  be 
an  egomaniac — a  state  quite  inconsistent  with 
true  dignity.  He  is  intrinsically  absurd. — 
Max  Beerbohm  in  Saturday  Review. 

And  what  a  wonderful  touch  is  that  which 
opens  all  the  sadder  side  of  life  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  jest,  by  showing,  within  the 
pedantic  gravity  of  Malvolio,  a  folly  more 
intense  than  all  the  other  folly  combined, 
the  half -tragic  absurdity  of  self-importance 
and  mad  vanity,  latent,  and  wanting  only 
the  stimulus  of  the  simplest  practical  joke 
to  call  it  forth! — Mrs,  Ouphant,  Motive. 


Mambrino,  in  Ariosto's  Orlando 
Furioso,  a  pagan  king  of  Bithynia 
who  was  specially  famous  for  a  golden 
helmet  that  made  its  wearer  invisible. 
Mambrino  is  killed  by  Rinaldo,  but 
the  helmet  is  stolen  from  him  by 
Scaripante  and  passes  through  many 
hands.  In  Don  Quixote  the  mad 
knight  sees  a  barber  who  has  clapped 
upon  his  head  a  brazen  basin  to  pro- 
tect his  hat  from  a  sudden  shower  of 
rain.  The  Don  insists  that  this  is 
Mambrino's  helmet.  Taking  posses- 
sion of  it  he  wears  it  as  such.  In  Part 
I,  iii,  8,  the  galley  slaves  snatch  the 
basin  from  Quixote's  head  and  break 
it  to  pieces.  Cervantes,  evidently 
forgetful  of  this  episode,  makes  it 
turn  up  again  in  book  IV,  ch.  xv, 
where  the  gentlemen  at  the  inn  sit 
in  judgment  on  it,  humor  the  Don[s 
whim  and  gravely  decide  that  it  is 
not  a  basin  but  an  imdoubted  helmet. 

Mamilius,  in  Shakespeare's  A 
Winter's  Tale,  a  precocious  and  loving 
boy,  son  of  Hermione,  who  dies  in 
consequence  of  his  mother's  disgrace 
(HI,  2). 

The  beautiful  suggestion  that  Shake- 
speare as  he  wrote  had  in  mind  his  own  dead 
little  son  still  fresh  and  living  at  his  heart, 
can  hardly  add  more  than  a  touch  of  addi- 
tional tenderness  to  our  perfect  and  piteous 
delight  in  him. — Swinburne. 

Mammon,    Sir    Epicure,    in    Ben 

Jonson's  comedy,  The  Alchemist 
(i6io),  a  conceited  and  purse-proud 
dupe  who  is  easily  cozened  into  sup- 
plying Subtle,  the  alchemist,  with  the 
fimds  necessary  for  carrying  on  his 
researches. 

Epicure  Mammon  is  the  most  determined 
offspring  of  its  author.  It  has  the  "whole 
matter  and  copy  of  the  father — eye,  nose, 
lip,  the  trick  of  his  frown."  It  is  just  such 
a  swaggerer  as  contemporaries  have  de- 
scribed Old  Ben  to  be.  Meercraft,  Bobadil, 
the  Host  of  the  New  Inn,  have  all  his  image 
and  superscription.  But  Mammon  is  arro- 
gant pretension  personified.  Sir  Samson 
Legend  in  Love  for  Love  is  such  another  lying, 
overbearing  character,  but  he  does  not  come 
up  to  Epicure  Mammon.  What  a  "tower- 
ing bravery  "  there  is  in  his  sensuality.  He 
affects  no  pleasure  vmder  a  sultan. — 
Charles  Lamb. 

Man,  The  Last,  lyric  by  Thomas 
Campbell  turning  on  the  gruesome 
fancy  of  a  man  who  is  left  in  utter 


Man  in  Black 


251 


Manly 


loneliness  after  all  the  race  has  per- 
ished. The  same  idea  cx^curs  in 
Byron's  Darkness,  and  a  useless  dis- 
cussion was  started  between  the  two 
poets  and  their  followers  as  to  who 
was  the  plagiarist.  Byron's  poem 
was  published  first,  but  Campbell 
insisted  that  his  own  Ijrric  was  written 
first  and  had  been  shown  in  MS.  to 
Byron. 

Man  in  Black,  an  eccentric  philan- 
thropist in  Goldsmith's  Citizen  of  the 
World  (1759),  an  evident  combination 
of  some  of  those  Goldsmith  family 
traits  which  were  afterwards  so  suc- 
cessfully recalled  in  Dr.  Primrose, 
Mr.  Hardcastle,  and  the  clergyman 
of  the  Deserted  Village. 

The  contrast  between  his  credulous 
charity  and  his  expressed  distrust  of  human 
nature,  between  his  simulated  harshness  and 
his  real  amiability,  constitutes  a  type  which 
has  since  been  often  used  successfully  in 
English  literature. — Austin  Dobson,  Eigh- 
teenth Century  Vignettes,  i,  121. 

Man  Who  Laughs,  hero  and  title 
of  a   novel  by   Victor  Hugo.     See 

GWYNPLAINE. 

Manders,  Pastor,  in  Ibsen's  Ghosts^ 
the  clerical  adviser  to  Mrs.  Alving,  a 
kindly  and  childish  man  with  a  good 
deal  of  moral  cowardice  and  futility 
posing  as  virtue. 

Mandeville,  hero  and  title  of  a 
romance  by  William  Godwin  (18 17), 
a  furious  misanthropist  suffering  from 
what  modem  psychopaths  would  call 
the  mania  of  persecution.  All  man- 
kind, he  thinks,  have  conspired 
against  him,  and  he  commits  strange 
deeds  nor  hesitates  at  crimes  to  pro- 
tect himself  against  this  visionary 
combination. 

Manette,  Dr.  Alexander,  in  Dick- 
ens's Tale  of  Two  Cities,  a  physician 
of  Paris,  for  eighteen  years  a  prisoner 
in  the  Bastille  because  of  his  pro- 
fessional acquaintance  with  the  mis- 
deeds of  a  noble  family.  Released 
just  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Revo- 
lution, his  daughter  Lucie  devotes 
herself  to  him  during  his  remaining 
years.  See  Carton,  Sydney,  and 
Darnay,  Charles. 

Manfred,  in  Horace  Walpole's 
romance,  The  Castle  of  Otranto  (1764), 
a   mediaeval   baron   who   tyrannizes 


over  his  wife  and  beautiful  daughter, 
but  is  finally  overawed  by  a  gigantic 
apparition. 

Manfred,  Coimt,  hero  of  Byron's 
dramatic  poem,  Manfred  (181 1),  a 
moody  person  of  high  intellect  and 
indomitable  will  who  has  been  guilty 
of  some  monstrous  crime  (apparently 
an  unholy  love  for  his  own  sister) 
and  wanders  in  agony  over  the  earth 
seeking  oblivion.  When  introduced 
he  has  made  his  final  abode  in  an 
Alpine  solitude.  He  calls  upon  the 
spirits  of  the  unbounded  universe 
(all  but  the  great  Supreme)  and  vainly 
pleads  with  them  for  the  gift  of 
forgetfulness.  In  his  last  agony 
demons  assail  him,  but  he  defies 
their  power.    See  Astarte. 

It  is  a  grand  and  terrific  vision  of  a  being 
invested  with  superhuman  attributes  in 
order  that  he  may  be  capable  of  more  than 
human  sufferings,  and  be  sustained  under 
them  by  more  than  human  force  and  pride. 
— ^Jeffrey:  Essays  from  the  Edinburgh 
Review. 

Manisty,  Edward,  in  Mrs.  Hum- 
phry Ward's  novel  of  Eleanor  (1900) , 
is  believed  to  be  drawn  from  William 
H.  Mallock.  It  is  no  flattering  por- 
trait. Self-centred  and  egotistical, 
moody  and  taciturn,  Manisty  adds 
to  these  qualities  the  ungraciousness 
of  pectdiarly  bad  manners.  He  falls 
in  love  first  with  his  cousin,  the  titular 
heroine,  and  then  with  a  pretty 
American.  Eleanor,  though  she  is  in 
love  with  him,  sacrifices  herself  to 
bring  about  the  match. 

Manly,  Captain,  in  Wycherley's 
comedy.  The  Plain-dealer  (1674),  is 
evidently  based  to  some  extent  on  the 
Alceste  of  Moliere's  Le  Misanthrope 
(1666).  In  externals  there  certainly 
seems  small  likeness  between  Wycher- 
ley's surly  and  uncouth  sea  captain 
and  the  polished  but  impatient  cynic 
painted  by  Moliere.  Both  alike, 
however,  have  been  soured  by  the 
wickedness  and  hypocrisy  of  the  age. 
Manly's  infatuation  for  straightfor- 
ward conduct  and  "plain-dealing" 
blinds  him  to  the  real  qualities  of 
men  and  women,  and  while  he  sees 
through  superficial  pretence  and  affec- 
tation he  is  like  a  child  in  the  hands 
of  those  who  humor  his  whims. 


Mannering 


252 


Margaret 


Wycherley  borrowed  Alceste  and  turned 
him — we  quote  the  words  of  so  lenient  a 
critic  as  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt — into  "a  ferocious 
sensualist,  who  believed  himself  as  great 
a  rascal  as  he  thought  everybody  else." 
The  surliness  of  Moliere's  hero  is  copied  and 
caricatured.  But  the  most  nauseous  liber- 
tinism and  the  most  dastardly  fraud  are 
substituted  for  the  purity  and  integrity  of 
of  the  original.  And  to  make  the  whole 
complete,  Wycherley  does  not  seem  to  be 
aware  that  he  was  not  drawing  the  portrait 
of  an  eminently  honest  man.  So  depraved 
was  his  moral  taste  that  while  he  firmly 
believed  that  he  was  producing  a  picture  of 
virtue  too  exalted  for  the  commerce  of  this 
world  he  was  really  delineating  the  greatest 
rascal  that  is  to  be  found  even  in  his  own 
writings, — Macaulay:  Essays  Comic  Dram- 
atists. 

Mannering)   Colonel   Guy,   in   Sir 

Walter  Scott's  Guy  Mannering  (1815), 
a  retired  English  officer,  wealthy,  a 
widower  of  aristocratic  tastes  and 
prejudices,  with  a  turn  for  astrological 
studies.  Despite  his  caustic  speech 
and  reserved  manner  he  has  a  fund 
of  affection  which  his  daughter  Julia 
learns  eventually  to  value.  In  chap- 
ter xvii,  however,  we  find  her  writ- 
ing, "  It  is  impossible  to  say  whether 
I  love,  admire  or  fear  him  the  most. 
His  success  in  life  and  in  war — his 
habit  of  making  every  object  yield 
before  the  energy  of  his  exertions, 
even  when  they  seemed  insurmount- 
able— all  these  have  given  a  hasty 
and  peremptory  cast  to  his  character, 
which  can  neither  endure  contradic- 
tion nor  make  allowances  for  defici- 
encies." 

Mannering,  Julia,  heroine  of  Scott's 
Guy  Mannering,  the  lively,  dark 
beauty  who  is  wooed  and  married 
by  Vanbeest  Brown.  Andrew  Lang 
holds  that  she  is  "  a  portrait  from 
the  life  "  of  Miss  Charpentier,  who 
became  Scott's  wife:  "  In  personal 
appearance  the  two  ladies  are  un- 
mistakably identical  and  Miss  Char- 
pentier in  a  letter  of  November  27, 
1797,  chaffs  her  lover  exactly  as  Julia 
Mannering  chaffs  her  austere  father." 

Mar,  Helen,  heroine  of  Jane 
Porter's  historical  romance,  The  Scot- 
tish Chiefs  (1809),  Though  she  is 
in  love  with  Sir  William  Wallace  she 
respects  his  devotion  to  his  dead  wife 
and  does  not  aspire  to  be  more  than 
his  sister.    Wallace  and  Bruce  rescue 


her  when  she  is  abducted  to  France. 
She  is  based  on  a  real  character  of 
that  name,  the  daughter  of  Lord  Mar. 
Marall,  Sir  Martin,  the  principal 
character  in  Dryden's  comedy,  Sir 
Martin  Marall,  or  the  Feigned  Innocent 
(1667).    See  Marplot. 

The  most  entire  piece  of  mirth  .  .  . 
that  certainly  ever  was  writ  .  .  ,  very 
good  wit  therein,  no  fooUng, — Pepys  Diary. 

March,  Basil,  in  W.  D.  Howells's 
novels  appears  first  with  his  newly 
married  wife  Isabella  as  the  hero  of 
Their  Wedding  Journey.  He  is  a 
Boston  journalist,  amiable,  unselfish, 
unpretentious,  with  a  dry  humor  that 
tends  towards  self  mockery,  especially 
when  he  affects  to  be  playing  the 
favorite  American  matrimonial  r61e 
of  the  Man-afraid-of-his-wife.  Like 
Arthur  Pendennis  he  and  Isabella 
March  reappear  in  many  of  Howells's 
novels  as  a  sort  of  chorus  on  the  main 
action,  but  he  assumes  an  especially 
important  part  in  A  Hazard  of  New 
Fortunes  as  the  editor  of  Every  Other 
Week. 

March,  Jo  {i.e.,  Josephine),  one  of 
the  titular  Little  Women  (1867)  in 
Louisa  M.  Alcott's  juvenile  story  of 
that  name.  Like  her  own  author  she 
develops  literary  tastes  and  begins 
her  career  by  contributing  "  blood- 
and- thunder  stories  "  to  the  sensa- 
tional weeklies,  but  desists  for  con- 
science sake  at  the  very  period  when 
they  begin  to  pay  well. 

Marcia,  heroine  of  Addison's  trag- 
edy, Cato  (17 1 3),  beloved  by  both 
Sempronius  and  Juba. 

Marck,  William  de  la  (the  "  Wild 
Boar  of  Ardennes  "),  in  Scott's  his- 
torical romance,  Quentin  Durward,  a 
notorious  robber  and  murderer  on  the 
frontiers,  excommunicated  by  the 
pope  for  a  thousand  crimes,  whose 
head  is  the  price  by  which  may  be 
won  the  hand  of  the  Countess  de 
Croye. 

Margaret  (diminutive  Gretchen,  i.e., 
Maggie;  in  French  Marguerite),  the 
heroine  of  the  first  part  of  Goethe's 
Faust  and  of  Gounod's  opera  based 
upon  Goethe's  drama.  Name  and 
character  are  Goethe's  own  inven- 


Margaret 


253 


Mariana 


tions.  In  the  original  Faust  chap- 
books  a  love-episode  is  passingly 
alluded  to.  Helen  of  Troy,  sum- 
moned from  the  shades  for  Faust's 
gratification,  bears  him  a  son  named 
Justus.  Marlowe  amplified  this 
episode.  He  gave  Helen  an  important 
share  in  the  action.  Not  until  1728 
do  we  come  across  any  hint  of  Mar- 
garet. In  a  little  chapbook  Faust 
falls  in  love  with  "  a  beautiful  but 
pure  girl  who  would  permit  him 
nothing  out  of  matrimony."  Faust 
declares  he  will  marry  her.  i-The  fiend 
points  out  that  marriage  had  been 
interdicted  in  the  compact  and  cows 
him  into  submission.  It  was  but  a 
step  from  this  idea  to  that  of  seduc- 
tion through  the  connivance  of 
Mephistopheles.  Gradually  the  per- 
sonage who  at  the  creative  touch  of 
Goethe  was  to  become  the  most 
charming  figure  in  the  story  grew  in 
importance.  There  is  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  even  in  advance  of  Goethe 
the  story  of  Faust  and  his  sweetheart 
was  acted  in  the  German  puppet 
shows  somewhat  as  we  know  it  now. 
But  it  was  Goethe  who  gave  the 
maiden  her  name  and  her  distinctive 
personality.  The  name  was  evidently 
suggested  by  Goethe's  first  love,  the 
maid-servant  Gretchen  (Maggie),  who 
returned  his  passionate  ardor  with 
sisterly  affection.  Some  traits  may 
have  been  borrowed  from  her.  But 
Frederike  Brion,  the  girl  whose  heart 
he  almost  broke,  was  more  nearly  in 
his  thoughts. 

Margaret  is  one  of  Goethe's  most 
exquisite  creations.  A  daughter  of 
the  people,  simple,  joyous,  artless, 
full  of  innocent  vanity,  of  naive  pert- 
ness,  of  sweet  girlish  love  and  faith, 
her  very  lack  of  the  heroic  qualities 
makes  the  pathos  of  her  story  com- 
plete. 

Faust's  feeling  for  her  speedily 
changes  from  mere  desire  to  some- 
thing more  spiritual,  from  lust  to  love, 
or,  rather,  to  a  mixture  of  love  and 
lust.  The  better  nature  struggles  for 
the  mastery,  but  in  the  end  the  cotm- 
sels  of  Mephistopheles  prevail.  Lust 
triumphs;  the  maiden  is  seduced. 
Her   shame   becomes   known.     She 


kills  the  infant  to  whom  she  has  given 
birth  and  is  thrown  into  prison.  Here 
Faust  finds  her,  crazed  with  suffering, 
singing  wild  snatches  of  song.  He 
strives  to  make  her  fly  with  him,  but 
flight  is  impossible.  Morning  dawns 
and  finds  her  dying.  Mephistopheles 
appears  and  forces  Faust  to  leave  her 
to  her  fate. 

Margaret,  the  titular  heroine  of  a 
romance  of  New  England  life  (1845), 
by  Rev.  Sylvester  Judd. 

Judd  had  a  delicate  purity  of  mind 
which  made  him  extremely  felicitous  in 
reproducing  the  simplicity  of  child-life  and 
moral  innocence.  Margaret's  pathway, 
amid  hideous  shapes  of  depravity  in  her 
family  associations,  is  as  redolent  of  inno- 
cence as  the  pathway  of  Una  and  her  lion. 
The  graceful  fancies  that  play  about  her 
in  her  walk  to  and  from  church,  her  spiritual 
experiences  in  the  evening  on  the  hills,  the 
sweetness  that  radiates  like  moonlight  from 
her  pure  soul,  are  singularly  child-like.  She 
walks  in  a  tainted  atmosphere,  but  the 
miasma  has  failed  to  strike  in. — Century. 

Margaret  of  Anjou,  daughter  of 
King  Ren6,  consort  of  Henry  VI  of 
England,  appears  in  all  three  parts  of 
Shakespeare's  Henry  VI  as  succes- 
sively maid,  wife  and  widow,  and 
reappears  in  the  latter  character  in 
Richard  III.  Under  her  reverses  her 
character  develops  from  a  high-spir- 
ited princess  to  a  "  bloody  minded 
Queen." 

Margaret  in  her  widowhood  is  also 
a  leading  character  in  Scott's  romance 
Anne  of  Geier stein,  where  she  strives 
to  secure  the  aid  of  Charles  the  Bold 
against  the  "  usurper  "  Edward  IV. 
Shakespeare  violates  history  through- 
out. He  makes  her  fall  in  love  with 
Suffolk  (7  Henry  VI,  v,  5),  a  sheer  in- 
vention. There  is  no  evidence  that 
she  stabbed  York  {III  Henry  VI,  i,  3, 
or  had  a  hand  in  Gloucester's  death. 
She  died  in  1482  and  Richard  III  did 
not  commence  his  reign  until  1483. 
Nevertheless  her  presence  in  the  play 
of  Richard  III  is  dramatically  effect- 
ive, as  she  appears  only  to  pour  out 
curses  and  watch  greedily  for  their 
fulfilment. 

Marguerite,  in  Gounod's  opera, 
Faust.    Sem  Margaret. 

Mariana,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
Measure  for  Measure  (1603),  a  young 


Marianne 


254 


Markheim 


lady  betrothed  but  not  actually  mar- 
ried to  Angelo  whom  he  has  aban- 
doned to  a  solitary  life.  "  There  at 
the  moated  grange  resides  the  de- 
jected Mariana,"  says  the  duke  to 
Isabella  (Actiii,  Sc.  l).  Acting  on  this 
hint  Tennyson  in  two  of  his  shorter 
poems,  Mariana  (1830)  and  Mariana 
in  the  South  (1832),  has  pictured  the 
distress  and  desolation  of  Shake- 
speare's heroine  when  Angelo  left  her 
to  wear  out  her  life  in  solitary  tears 
at  the  moated  grange. 

Marianne,  titular  heroine  of  a 
novel  (1731)  by  Pierre  Carlet  de 
Marivaux. 

A  simple  country  girl  who  tells  her 
own  story, — shecomesup  to  Paris  and 
falls  imder  the  guardianship  of  a 
middle-aged  rou6  with  great  pretences 
to  sanctity.  She  indignantly  repels 
all  his  advances,  flies  for  refuge  to  a 
convent  and  eventually  falls  in  love 
with  a  worthy  young  man  who  proves 
to  be  her  persecutor's  nephew. 

Marianne  has  been  said  to  be  the  origin 
of  Pamela,  which  is  not  exactly  the  fact.  But 
it  is  certain  that  it  is  a  remarkable  novel 
and  that  it  gave  rise  to  the  singular  phrase 
Marivaudage  with  which  the  author,  not 
at  all  voluntarily,  has  enriched  literature. 
The  real  importance  of  Marianne  in  the 
history  of  fiction  is  that  it  is  the  first  ex- 
ample of  the  novel  of  analysis  rather  than 
of  incident. — George  Saintsbury. 

Marigold,  Dr.,  narrator  of  the  story 
Dr.  Marigold's  Prescriptions  (1865), 
by  Charles  Dickens.  A  "  Cheap 
Jack"  or  itinerant  auctioneer,  he  loses 
both  his  daughter  and  his  wife  and 
adopts  a  little  deaf-mute. 

Marina,  heroine  of  Shakespeare's 
Pericles y  Prince  of  Tyre  (1608),  and 
daughter  of  the  titular  hero,  so  called 
because  she  was  born  at  sea.  She 
was  perfidiously  sold  as  a  slave  at 
Mjrtilene,  where  Pericles  eventually 
discovered  her.  She  herself  dis- 
covered her  mother  Thasia  (supposed 
to  have  died  in  childbirth)  in  the 
priestess  officiating  at  the  oracle  of 
Diana  at  Ephesus. 

Marinel,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene 
(Books  iii-iv),  is  the  recalcitrant 
lover  of  Florimel.  Living  in  a  rocky 
cave  he  allows  nobody  to  pass  with- 
out   challenge.      Britomart    proved 


more  than  a  match  for  him,  however, 
for  when  he  forbade  her  progress  she 
simply  knocked  him  **  grovelling  on 
the  ground  "  with  her  spear.  His 
love  story  is  told  under  Florimel. 

Marius,  titular  hero  of  Walter 
Pater's  Marius  the  Epicurean  (1853), 
a  young  Roman  noble  at  the  time 
when  Marcus  Aurelius,  by  precept 
and  example,  encouraged  people  to 
take  their  old  religion  seriously.  Like 
the  Emperor,  Marius  is  an  exponent 
of  the  finer  tendencies  of  his  day,  a 
reminiscence  at  once  of  Roman  great- 
ness in  the  past  and  a  prophecy  of 
the  Christian  future.  His  philosophy, 
based  on  Cyrenaicism  or  Epicurean- 
ism, altered  more  or  less,  ebbed  and 
flowed,  touched  very  closely  on 
Stoicism,  as  true  Epicureanism  nat- 
urally does,  and  nearly  welled  over 
into  Christianity.  So  great  was  the 
aesthetic  impression  made  on  the  hero 
by  early  Christian  services,  and  so 
strong  his  apprehension  of  the  tran- 
quil happiness  and  corporate  exist- 
ence in  the  Church  of  Christian  men, 
that  he  was  "  almost  persuaded  to  be 
a  Christian."  He  died,  too,  while 
still  young,  in  such  circtmistances 
that  the  generosity  of  the  Church 
regarded  him  as  a  martyr. 

Marjoribanks,  Lucilla,  heroine  of 
Mrs.  Oliphant's  novel  Miss  Marjori- 
banks (1865),  Daughter  of  the  hard- 
headed,  unromantic  doctor  of  Carling- 
ford,  who  early  in^  the  story  is  left  a 
not  inconsolable  widower,  she  resolves 
to  devote  her  energies  to  the  task  of 
being  "  a  comfort  to  dear  papa,"  and 
incidentally  of  reforming  and  reshap- 
ing the  unsatisfactory  condition  of 
Carlingford  society.  The  doctor, 
possessing  a  keen  sense  of  humor,  is 
greatly  tickled  by  the  grand  air  with 
which  his  daughter  occupies  her  new 
position  and  still  more  delighted  at 
her  success. 

Markheim,  hero  and  title  of  a  short 
story  by  R.  L.  Stevenson  in  The 
Merry  Men  (1887).  A  man  who  has 
failed  through  weakness,  eventually 
falls  into  crime,  and  deliberately 
murders  a  man  for  gain.  He  is  con- 
fronted by  his  own  soul,  which  drives 
him  to  repentance  and  confession. 


Marko 


255 


Marplot 


Here  is  the  germ  that  eventually 
developed  into  The  Strange  Case  of  Dr. 
Jekylland  Mr.  Hyde  (1886). 

In  Markheim  the  devil  is  akin  to  the 
German  Doppelg&nger.  He  is  Markheim 's 
worst  self,  or  represents  in  the  flesh  his 
worst  possibilities,  coming  at  a  crucial 
moment  to  tempt  the  man  who  has  slipped 
away  from  good  to  commit  himself  irre- 
vocably to  evil.  Here,  in  half-a-dozen 
pages,  is  compressed  the  whole  history  of  a 
weak  mortal's  gradual  descent  from  innocent 
youth,  highly  aspiring,  to  most  iniquitous 
manhood.  Markheim  is  going,  as  thousands 
of  Markheims  infirm  of  purpose  have  gone, 
morally  straight  to  hell.  He  is  stayed  at 
the  last  moment  by  a  flash  of  defiance,  of 
revolt  against  the  malignant  shape  that 
would  bind  him  fast  for  ever.  Only  George 
Eliot's  Tito  Melema  is  comparable  in  draw- 
ing to  Markheim,  and  Mr.  Stevenson  does 
not  lose  in  force  by  brevity. — N.  Y.  Nation, 
May  19,  1887. 

Marko,  Prince,  in  George  Mere- 
dith's novel,  The  Tragic  Comedians, 
a  rival  of  Dr.  Alvan  (q.v.)  for  the 
hand  of  Clotilda  von  Rudiger.  He 
kills  the  other  in  a  duel.  The  novel 
is  based  upon  the  tragic  story  of 
Ferdinand  Lassalle's  death.  Alvan 
is  Lassalle,  Prince  Marko  in  real  life 
was  Yanko  von  Racowitza. 

Marlow,  Young,  in  Goldsmith's 
She  Stoops  to  Conquer  (1773),  son  of 
Sir  Charles  Marlow,  who  sends  him 
on  a  visit  to  his  old  friend  Squire 
Hardcastle  and  describes  him  to  that 
gentleman  as  a  miracle  of  shyness  and 
modesty.  Marlow's  shyness  afiflicts 
him  only  in  the  unaccustomed  society 
of  ladies;  with  women  of  other  classes 
he  is  quite  at  his  ease.  He  mistakes 
Hardcastle's  house  for  an  inn  and  his 
daughter  for  the  barmaid.  She, 
knowing  who  he  is,  humors  the  mis- 
take and  wins  him  first  to  an  out- 
burst of  passion  and  then  to  a  con- 
fession of  honest  love. 

Mamer,  Silas,  the  leading  char- 
acter in  George  Eliot's  novel,  Silas 
Marner,  the  Weaver  of  Raveloe  (1861). 
A  handloom  weaver  afflicted  with 
catalepsy,  he  had  known  strange  spir- 
itual experiences  in  youth,  but  his 
nearest  friend  had  robbed  him  at  once 
of  his  sweetheart  and  his  good  name, 
falsely  accusing  him  of  theft;  and 
Silas,  bewildered,  distrusting  God  and 
man,  had  retired  to  a  lonely  hut. 
Here  he  found  his  only  solace  in  gloat- 


ing over  a  little  heap  of  gold  scraped 
together  by  miserly  means.  One  day 
he  is  robbed.  He  is  saved  from  his 
own  despair  by  the  chance  finding  of 
a  little  child.  On  this  baby  girl  he 
lavishes  all  the  latent  love  of  his 
thwarted  nature,  and  her  filial  affec- 
tion redeems  him  and  fits  him  once 
more  for  human  companionship  when, 
after  sixteen  years,  the  real  thief  is 
discovered  and  Silas's  good  name  is 
restored. 

Marphtmus,  In  Moli^re's  comedy, 
Le  Marriage  Force  (1664),  a  pyrrhic 
philosopher,  unable  to  make  up  his 
mind  upon  any  subject.  Sganarelle 
consults  him  about  his  marriage: 
"  Perhaps,  it  may  be  so;  everything 
is  uncertain,"  replies  the  sceptic. 
Sganarelle  repays  him  in  his  own  coin. 
He  thrashes  him  and,  when  Marphu- 
rius  threatens  an  action  for  damages, 
he  retorts,  "  Perhaps,  it  may  be  so; 
everything  is  uncertain."  (Sc.  11.) 

Marplot,  the  hero  of  Mrs.  Susanna 
Centlivre's  comedy,  The  Busybody 
(1709),  and  its  sequel.  Marplot  in 
Lisbon  (171 1).  An  inquisitive  and 
impertinent  booby,  continually  in- 
truding, to  his  own  discomfiture  and 
that  of  others,  into  the  affairs  of  his 
neighbor.  He  owes  his  being  in  part 
to  Moli^re's  Etourdi  and  its  English 
imitations  (Dryden's  Sir  Martin 
Marall  and  the  Duke  of  Newcastle's 
Sir  Martin  Marplot)  ^  but  is  in  essen- 
tials an  original  character  of  genuine 
humor,  differing  from  his  predecessors 
**  by  committing  a  succession  of  ex- 
ploits in  action  as  well  as  in  speech. 
He  is  the  parent  of  that  long-lived 
favorite  of  our  own  days,  Paul  Pry, 
and  some  of  his  unexpected  appari- 
tions, especially  one  down  the  chim- 
ney, are  irresistibly  ludicrous."  (A. 
W.  Ward:  English  Dramatic  Litera- 
ture, p.  491.) 

Marplot,  Sir  Martin,  hero  of  a 
comedy  of  that  name  translated  or 
adapted,  with  little  more  than  a 
change  of  venue,  from  Moli^re's 
U  Etourdi,  by  William  Cavendish, 
Duke  of  Newcastle,  who  was  assisted 
in  the  staging  by  Dryden.  Mrs. 
Centlivre  borrowed  the  name  Mar- 
plot, shorn  of  its  knightly  title,  for 


Marrall 


256 


Marwood 


the  hero  of  her  comedy  The  Busybody, 
who  differs  materially  from  his  pre- 
decessor.   See  Lelie. 

Marrall,  Jack,  in  Massinger's  com- 
edy, A  New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts 
(1625),  a  Term-Driver,  a  vile  tool  of 
Sir  Giles  Overreach,  whom  the  usurer 
utilizes  in  his  dirty  work.  Marrall, 
convinced  that  Sir  Giles's  nephew  and 
chief  victim,  Frank  Wellborn,  is  en- 
gaged to  an  heiress,  seeks  to  curry- 
favor  with  him  by  betraying  his 
employer,  and  is  finally  involved  in 
the  old  man's  ruin  and  kicked  off 
the  stage,  to  the  applause  of  every- 
body. 

Marsac,  Gaston  de  Bonne,  Sieur 
de^  hero  of  Stanley  Weyman's  A 
Gentleman  of  France  (1893),  a  histori- 
cal romance  dealing  with  France  just 
before  the  accession  of  Henry  ^  IV. 
An  impoverished  nobleman,  chival- 
rous, adventurous  and  thoroughly 
loyal  to  the  cause  of  Henry  of  Navarre, 
he  involves  himself  in  a  plot  for  the 
abduction  of  Turenne's  niece,  Mad- 
emoiselle de  Vire,  and  wins  that  high- 
spirited  lady  from  sworn  enmity  to 
love  and  marriage. 

Marse  Chan  (the  name  by  which 
he  is  known  to  his  negro  servant,  who 
tells  the  story),  a  gallant  Southerner, 
hero  and  title  of  a  short  story  by 
Thomas  Nelson  Page,  published  in 
volume.  In  Old  Virginia^  (1887).  He 
loves  a  lady  who  loves  him  in  return, 
but  treats  him  in  true  Lady  Disdain 
fashion  until  she  learns  of  his  death 
on  the  battlefield,  when  she  mourns 
for  him  as  for  a  husband  all  the  rest 
of  her  life. 

Marshmont,  Allegra,  in  I.  Zang- 
will's  novel,  The  Mantle  of  Elijah 
(1900),  the  daughter  of  an  English 
prime  minister,  full  of  high  ideals, 
under  whose  influence  she  makes  a 
deplorable  marriage  with  Robert,  a 
plausible  but^  vulgar  demagogue. 
Through  the  influence  of  Raphael 
Dominick  she  is  disillusionized  and 
returns  to  her  own  family. 

Martano,  in  Ariosto's  Orlando 
Furioso,  Books  viii-ix,  (15 16),  a  brag- 
gart and  a  coward,  who  presented 
himself  before  Eang  Norandino  of 
Damascus  in  the  armor  he  had  stolen 


from  Gryphon,  the  victor  in  a  great 
tournament,  and  so  robbed  him  not 
only  of  his  prizes  but  also  of  his  faith- 
less lady-love,  Origilla.  The  villainy 
was  unmasked  by  Aguilant ,  who  seized 
the  precious  pair  and  returned  with 
them  to  Damascus.  Martano  was 
hanged  and  Origilla  imprisoned. 
Spenser  imitated  the  character  of 
Martano  in  his  Sir  Bragadocchio, 
Faerie  Queene,  iii,  8,  10. 

Martezt,  Sir  Oliver,  in  Shake- 
speare's As  You  Like  It,  a  vicar  de- 
termined that  "  ne'er  a  fantastical 
knave  of  them  all  shall  flout  me  out 
of  my  calling." 

Martha,  in  Goethe's  Faust,  a 
garrulous  and  foolish  matron,  a  friend 
of  1  Margaret,  who  allows  Mephisto- 
pheles  to  make  pretended  love  to  her 
while  Faust  is  carrying  out  his  plans 
for  the  seduction  of  the  younger 
woman. 

Martin,  Mabel,  heroine  of  a  narra- 
tive poem  by  J.  G.  Whittier,  originally 
pubhshed  (i860)  under  the  title  of 
The  Witch's  Daughter,  afterwards 
(1875)  revised  and  enlarged  and  re- 
published '  as  Mabel  Martin.  The 
daughter  of  a  reputed  witch  who  had 
been  legally  murdered,  she  sits  at  a 
husking  frolic  alone  and  despised,  and 
is  finally  driven  away  with  taunts 
and  insults.  Esken  Harden,  the  host 
of  the  occasion,  touched  by  her  beauty 
and  her  sorrow,  follows  and  brings  her 
back  to  introduce  her  as  his  bride  to 
the  company  assembled. 

Martine,  in  Molihre's  Le  Midecin 
Malgre  Lui  (1666),  the  wife  of  Sgana- 
relle.  When  the  latter  beats  her  she 
screams  for  help,  but  when  Robert, 
a  neighbor,  would  champion  her, 
she  resents  his  interference.  /'It  is 
my  wish  to  be  beaten! "  she  cries,  and 
Sganarelle  transfers  the  stick  to 
Robert's  shoulders  for  meddling  with 
matters  that  do  not  concern  him. 

Marwood,  Alice,  in  Dickens's  novel, 
Dombey  and  Son  (1846),  a  precocious 
criminal  who  had  been  transported 
in  girlhood  for  participation  in  a 
burglary.  Returning  to  England  she 
was  seduced  by  Carker.  She  was 
assisted  in  securing  revenge  by  her 
mother,  "  Mrs.    Brown,"    a  former 


Mascarille 


257 


Matsys 


mistress  of  Mrs.  Skewton's  brother- 
in-law.  Through  this  illegitimate 
connection  Alice  rightly  came  by  a 
striking  family  resemblance  to  Edith 
Skewton,  Mr.  Dombey's  second  wife, 
with  whom  Carker  eloped.  See 
DoMBEY,  Edith. 

Mascarille  (Italian  maschera,  a 
mask,  under  which  disguise  Moli^re 
himself  played  the  part),  one  of 
Molidre's  best  known  characters, 
who  appears  in  I'  Eiourdi  (1653),  in 
Le  Depit  Amour eux  (1654),  and  Les 
Precieuses  Ridicules  (1659).  He  is 
imitated  from  the  Davus  and  Tranio 
of  classic  comedy,  and  in  his  turn  gave 
way  to  Sganarelle  and  Scapin,  the 
fruits  of  Moliere's  maturer  imagina- 
tion. An  ever-faithful  yet  ever-lying 
valet,  he  cheats,  steals  and  perjures 
himself  for  his  master,  but  is  always 
true  to  his  interests  and  develops  an 
amazing  fertility  of  trickery  in  seeking 
to  advance  them. 

Maskwell,  in  William  Congreve's 
comedy,  The  Double-Dealer  (1700),  a 
suave  and  cunning  hypocrite  whose 
conscious  villainy  is  more  fiend-like 
than  human.  Lady  Touchwood,  her- 
self a  woman  of  low  morals,  cherishing 
a  lawless  passion  for  her  husband's 
nephew,  Mellefont,  describes  him  as 
"  a  sedate,  a  thinking  villain  whose 
black  blood  runs  temperately  bad." 
Knowing  her  secret,  Maskwell  at- 
tempts to  use  it  for  Mellefont's  dis- 
comfiture and  his  own  conquest  of 
Cynthia  Pliant,  to  whom  Mellefont 
is  affianced,  all  the  while  pretending 
to  be  the  latter's  best  friend. 

The  heartless  treachery  'of  Maskwell  Is 
overdone.  He  is  a  devil,  pure  and  simple, 
and^not  a  man  at  all. — E.  W.  GossE. 

Maslova,  heroine  of  Tolstoi's  novel, 
Resurrection  (1900).  As  a  young 
girl  out  at  service  she  had  been  se- 
duced by  Prince  Dimitri  Ivanovitch 
Nekludoff,  a  profligate  Russian  aristo- 
crat. Plunging  into  a  life  of  shame, 
she  is  finally  brought  to  trial  for  the 
murder  and  robbery  of  one  of  her 
lovers.  NekludofiE  is  on  the  jury  that 
finds  her  guilty.  So  great  is  his  re- 
morse for  the  past  that  he  forswears 
all  the  privileges  of  rank  and  wealth, 
follows  her  to  Siberia  and  succeeds  in 


reforming  her,  but  fails  in  his  effort 
to  marry  her.  She  loves  him,  indeed, 
but  she  will  not  accept  so  great  a 
sacrifice  at  his  hands.  He  devotes 
the  rest  of  his  life  to  good  works  and 
especially  the  weeding  out  of  social 
abuses. 

Mason,  Lady,  heroine  of  Anthony 
Trollope's  Orley  Farm,  1862. 

Her  mixture  of  guilt  and  innocence,  her 
strength  and  weakness  and  her  power  of 
making  herself  loved  whatever  she  does, 
constitute  altogether  one  of  the  best  con- 
ceived types  of  mixed  character  neither 
good  nor  bad  that  modern  English  fiction 
has  to  show. — Saturday  Review,  October 
II,  1862. 

Massingbird,  Lost  Sir.  See  Heath, 
Sir  Massingbird. 

Master,  The  Old,  a  leading  figure 
in  Dr.  O.  W.  Holmes's  Poei  at  the 
Breakfast  Table,  who  divides  con- 
versational honors  with  the  Poet. 
"  I  think,"  says  the  Poet,  "  he  sus- 
pects himself  of  a  three-story  intellect, 
and  I  don't  feel  sure  that  he  isn't 
right." 

Matchin,  Maud,  the  central  figure 
and  the  best  drawn  character  in  John 
Hay's  The  Breadwinners  (1884).  A 
beautiful,  hard,  sordid  and  common- 
place girl  whose  mind  is  warped  by 
wild  desires  for  social  advancement; 
she  is  the  exponent  as  well  as  the 
victim  of  a  badly  regulated  education 
in  the  public  schools. 

Mathilda,  in  Rossini's  opera,  Gug- 
lielmo  Tell  (1829),  sister  of  Gessler, 
the  tyrannical  Austrian  governor  of 
Switzerland.  She  is  in  love  with 
Arroldo,  a  Swiss,  and  marries  him 
after  her  brother's  death. 

Matilda,  heroine  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  narrative  poem,  Rokeby  (1812). 
Daughter  of  the  Knight  of  Rokeby 
and  niece  of  Mortham,  she  was  be- 
loved by  Wilfred,  but  herself  loved  her 
father's  page.  After  the  course  of 
true  love  had  run  roughly  for  a  period 
it  was  made  smooth  by  the  discovery 
that  the  humble  page  was  the  son 
and  heir  of  Mortham. 

Matsys,  Quentin  (1466-1530),  a 
noted  Flemish  painter,  is  the  hero 
and  title  of  a  novel  by  Caroline 
Pichler  founded  on  fact.  Originally 
a  blacksmith  in  Antwerp,   Quentin 


Matthias 


258 


Mauprat 


fell  in  love  with  Liza,  whose  father, 
Johann  Mandyn,  a  famous  painter, 
declared  that  only  a  painter  might 
win  his  daughter.  Thereupon  the 
blacksmith  gave  up  the  anvil  for  the 
secret  study  of  art.  One  day  he 
visited  Mandyn's  studio  surrepti- 
tiously and  on  the  leg  of  a  pictured 
angel  he  painted  a  bee.  So  life-like 
was  the  insect  that  Mandyn,  return- 
ing, tried  to  shoo  it  away  with  his 
handkerchief.  One  revelation  lead- 
ing to  another,  the  old  painter  gladly 
welcomed  the  young  one  as  his 
son-in-law. 

Matthias,  in  J.  R.  Ware's  drama, 
The  Polish  Jew  (1874),  a  German 
miller  haunted  by  the  memory  of  a 
terrible  crime.  One  Christmas  Eve 
a  Jew  pedlar  had  stopped  at  his  house 
for  refreshment  and  driven  off  in  his 
sleigh.  Matthias  had  followed  and 
murdered  him  for  the  money  he  had 
carelessly  exhibited,  then  flung  the 
body  to  be  consumed  in  a  limekiln. 
Every  Christmas  eve  after  that,  the 
imagined  sound  of  sleighbells  drives 
Matthias  almost  mad  with  horror. 
Finally  he  dreams  that  he  has  been 
put  into  a  mesmeric  sleep,  forced  into 
confession,  and  executed.  The  shock 
kills  him.  Ware's  drama  was  founded 
on  a  short  story,  Le  JuifPolonais,  by 
Erckmann-Chatrian.  Henry  Irving 
won  his  first  great  success  in  the 
part  of  Matthias  and  he  repeatedly 
brought  out  the  play  under  the  title 
of  The  Bells. 

Maud,  heroine  of  a  narrative  poem 
by  Alfred  Tennyson,  of  whom  we  are 
told  little  more  than  that  at  sixteen 
she  was  tall  and  stately  and  had  a 
classical  profile.  Her  lover,  unnamed, 
who  tells  the  story,  draws  himself  at 
full  length  as  a  sort  of  modernized 
Ravenswood,  though  even  more  peev- 
ish and  hysterical. 

Tennyson  held  a  volume  of  Maud  in  his 
hand  and  was  talking  about  it,  as  he  loved 
to  do:  "I  want  to  read  this  to  you  because 
I  want  you  to  feel  what  the  poem  means. 
It  is  dramatic;  it  is  the  story  of  a  man  who 
has  a  morbid  nature,  with  a  touch  of  heredi- 
tary insanity,  and  very  selfish.  The  poem 
is  to  show  what  love  does  for  him.  The  war 
is  only  an  episode.  You  must  remember 
that  it  is  not  I  myself  speaking.  It  is  this 
man  with  the  strain  of  madness  in  his  blood 


and  the  memory  of  a  great  trouble  and 
wrong  that  has  put  him  out  with  the  world." 
— Henry  Van  Dyke,  Century  Magazine, 
vol.  45.  p.  539. 

Maugis,  one  of  Charlemagne's 
paladins,  a  magician  as  well  as  a 
warrior,  and  the  Nestor  of  French 
romance.  He  is  the  Malagigi  of  Puld 
and  Ariosto. 

Maul,  in  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress, Part  II  (1684),  a  giant  fond  of 
sophistical  reasonings,  whereby  he 
deluded  and  deceived  the  young.  He 
attacked  Mr.  Greatheart  with  a  club, 
but  Greatheart  pierced  him  under  the 
fifth  rib,  and  then  cut  off  his  head. 

Mauley,  Sir  Edward,  in  Scott's 
romance  of  The  Black  Dwarf  (18 16), 
is  known  as  the  Black  Dwarf  from 
his  physical  deformities.  A  mis- 
shapen monster  with  only  "  a  dis- 
torted resemblance  to  humanity,"  he 
is  morbidly  sensitive  to  his  defects 
and  is  moreover  the  prey  to  an  acute 
conscience.  Bom  to  great  wealth 
which  his  parents  designed  should 
become  greater  by  his  union  with  a 
kinswoman,  Letitia,  he  was  tricked 
out  of  his  promised  bride  by  Richard 
Vere,  a  bosom  friend,  while  he  lay  in 
jail  for  defending  that  friend  from  a 
would-be  assassin  whom  he  had  slain. 
Losing  faith  in  humanity  he  goes  into 
retirement  and  is  suspected  to  be  a 
magician  in  league  with  the  devil,  but 
gradually  wins  popular  confidence 
by  acting  as  physician  to  mind  and 
body  of  any  who  sought  his  aid. 
Though  professing  that  his  only  ob- 
ject is  the  misanthropic  one  of  "  per- 
petuating the  mass  of  human  misery," 
he  acts  always  with  wisdom,  gener- 
osity and  exuberant  liberality.  He 
reveals  himself  at  last  as  Sir  Edward 
Mauley  in  order  to  baulk  Richard 
Vere  in  his  plans  for  marrying  Isabel 
Vere,  his  daughter,  to  the  unworthy 
Langley. 

Mauprat,  Adrian  de,  the  lover  and 
husband  of  Julie  in  Bulwer  Lytton's 
drama,  Richelieu.  A  colonel  in  the 
army  of  Louis  XHI,  he  is  described 
as  "  the  wildest  gallant  and  bravest 
knight  of  France."  The  king  shut 
him  up  in  the  Bastille  for  braving 
his  displeasure  by  the  surreptitious 


Mause 


259 


May  Queen 


marriage,  but  Richelieu  after  a  due 
period  of  suspense  procured  his  release 
and  pardon. 

George  Sand  has  taken  the  name 
Mauprat  as  the  title  and  hero  of  a 
romance  embodying  the  character 
and  career  of  the  last  of  a  fierce  race 
of  robber  barons  in  France. 

Mause,  Old,  in  Scott's  romance, 
Old  Mortality,  a  covenanter,  the 
mother  of  Cuddie  Headdrigg. 

Mauves,  Madame  de,  titular  hero- 
ine of  a  short  story  by  Henry  James 
in  A  Passionate  Pilgrim  and  other 
Tales. 

A  very  subtle  study  of  the  contrast  be- 
tween a  pure  American  girl's  idealistic  view 
of  the  old  French  noblesse,  and  her  actual 
experience  of  a  selfish  and  worthless  French 
husband  of  long  descent  whom  she  has  mar- 
ried out  of  the  depths  of  her  girlish  enthusi- 
asm— the  contrast  being  pointed,  of  course, 
by  the  appearance  of  the  right  man  on  the 
scene  when  it  is  too  late  to  have  any  effect 
on  the  development  of  the  story,  except  by 
eliciting  a  deeper  shade  of  depravity  in  the 
husband  and  a  finer  shade  of  moral  idealism 
in  the  wife. — Spectator. 

Mavering,  Dan,  hero  of  W.  D. 
Howells's  novel,  April  Hopes  (1887), 
a  Harvard  graduate  of  good  family 
who  marries  Alice  Pasmer.  She  is  a 
high-bred  New  England  girl  with  a 
Puritan  conscience  and  an  ironclad 
code  which  makes  no  allowance  for 
human  nature. 

Mawworm,  in  Isaac  Bickerstafl's 
comedy,  The  Hypocrite  (1768),  a 
vulgar  and  ignorant  imitator  of  his 
patron  Dr.  Cantwell  and  a  co-con- 
spirator against  the  comfort  and 
dignity  of  Sir  John  Lambert's  family. 
He  shares  in  Cantwell's  downfall 
when  their  plans  miscarry.  Cantwell 
is  modelled  on  Moli^re's  Tartuffe,  but 
Mawworm  is  an  original  conception 
of  Bickerstaff 's,  introduced  to  enforce 
the  satire  against  the  later  puritan 
dissenters.  In  his  attitude  of  pre- 
tended humility  he  anticipates  Uriah 
Heep:  "  Do  despise  me,"  he  pleads; 
"  I'm  the  prouder  for  it.  I  like  to  be 
despised  "  (Act  ii,  Sc.  i).  He  is  the 
best  drama  character  in  the  play,  and 
in  the  hands  of  successive  exponents, 
from  Weston  and  Quick  to  the  elder 
Matthews  and  Liston,  enjoyed  almost 
unexampled  prosperity. 


Bickerstaff's  comedy,  The  Hypocrite, 
Is  a  fairly  brisk  and  entertaining  piece 
founded  upon  Tartuffe.  Instead  of 
coming  directly  through  the  French,  It 
reaches  us  through  Gibber's  adaptation  The 
Nonjuror  (1717J,  which  substituted  for 
Tartuflfe  an  English  Catholic  priest  seducing 
an  English  gentleman  into  treasonable  prac- 
tices. CoUey  Cibber  provoked  the  wrath  of 
the  Jacobite  faction  and  was  responsible 
for  the  endless  series  of  attacks  to  which  he 
was  thenceforward  subject.  With  the  ex- 
piration of  Jacobite  hopes  the  political 
aspects  of  the  play  lost  their  significance. 
BickerstaflE  returned  to  the  original  motive, 
and  by  the  introduction  of  Mawworm 
directed  the  satire  against  the  late  devel- 
opment of  puritanical  dissent. — London 
Athencsum. 

Maxime,  in  Chaucer's  Second 
Nun's  Tale  in  The  Canterbury  Tales 
(1388),  an  officer  of  the  prefect  Alma- 
chius,  who  during  the  Diocletian  per- 
secution was  ordered  to  slay  Valerian 
and  Tiburce,  contumacious  Christians 
who  refused  to  worship  the  image  of 
Jupiter.  Instead  he  compassionately 
took  them  home  with  him,  was  con- 
verted and  baptized  by  them  and 
when  they  were  martyred  declared 
that  he  saw  angels  conveying  them 
to  heaven.  Thereupon  Almachius 
had  him  flogged  to  death. 

Maylie,  Rose,  in  Dickens's  Oliver 
Twist,  adopted  daughter  of  Mrs. 
Maylie.  She  eventually  marries 
Harry  Maylie  and  turns  out  to  be  the 
aunt  of  Oliver  whom  the  family  had 
befriended  in  his  need. 

May  Queen,  in  the  poem  of  that 
name  by  Tennyson,  is  the  bright-eyed 
merry  Alice  who  in  Part  i  begs  her 
mother  to  call  her  early  next  morning : 

For  I'm  to  be  queen  o'  the  May,  mother, 
I'm  to  be  queen  o'  the  May. 

In  Part  11  Alice  is  lying  bedridden 
on  New  Year's  eve,  and  again  she  begs 
to  be  called  early,  for  another  reason: 

But  I  would  see  the  sun  rise  upon  the  glad 

New  Year, 
So  if  you  're  waking,  call  me,  call  me  early 

mother  dear. 

In  Part  iii  March  has  come.  Alice 
has  lingered  until  now,  but  breathes 
her  last  farewell  with  a  kind  word  for 
Rabin,  the  village  lad  who  had  loved 
her  in  her  proud  and  wilful  youth: 


Mazeppa 


260 


Medoro 


If  I  had  lived — I  cannot  tell — I  might  have 

been  his  wife; 
But  all  these  things  have  ceased  to  be  with 

my  desire  of  life. 

Mazeppa,  Ivan  Stefanovitch  (1640- 
1709),  the  hero  of  Byron's  poem,  Ma- 
zeppa (1819),  was  an  historical  charac- 
ter. By  birth  a  Cossack,  he  entered 
the  service  of  John  Casimir,  King  of 
Poland.  A  Polish  nobleman  sur- 
prised him  in  an  intrigue  with  his 
wife,  bound  him  naked  on  his  own 
horse,  and  lashed  the  animal  out 
into  the  steppes.  The  animal  bore 
him  off  to  its  native  woods  in  the 
Ukraine,  where  Cossacks  released 
him.  He  became  a  leader  among 
them  and  was  ennobled  by  Peter  the 
Great,  but  deserted  to  Charles  XII 
when  that  Swedish  monarch  invaded 
Russia.  After  the  defeat  at  Pultowa, 
he  killed  himself  by  poison. 

Byron,  basing  his  poem  on  Vol- 
taire's Charles  X//,  makes  Mazeppa 
tell  his  story  to  Charles  XII  after 
Pultowa.  Pushkin  has  made  Ma- 
zeppa the  hero  of  a  drama,  Pultowa. 
Hugo  has  a  poem  on  the  subject  in 
Les  Orientales.  Boulanger  in  1827 
exhibited  a  picture  of  Mazeppa  bound 
to  his  horse.  Its  fame,  however,  was 
eclipsed  later  in  the  same  year  by  two 
pictures  exhibited  by  Horace  Vernet. 
A  portrait  of  Mazeppa  painted  from 
life  was  discovered  in  1886,  at  Kief, 
in  Southern  Russia. 

A  melodrama,  Mazeppa,  was  pro- 
duced in  Philadelphia  in  1825  by  a 
handsome  Englishman  named  Hunter, 
and  had  a  great  run.  In  1840  Adah 
Isaacs  Menken  originated  the  idea 
of  substituting  a  woman  (herself)  in 
the  part,  and  her  overwhelming  success 
in  America,  London  and  Paris  made 
it  a  favorite  play  with  other  actresses 
who  had  a  shapely  form  to  display. 

Meadows,  Mr.,  in  Madame 
D'Arblay's  novel  of  Cecilia  (q.v.),  is 
an  ennuye,  described  by  one  of  the 
characters  as  "  the  sweetest  dresser 
in  the  world.  I  assure  you  it 's  a  great 
thing  to  be  spoke  to  by  him;  we  are 
all  of  us  quite  angry  when  he  won't 
take  any  notice  of  us."  He  himself 
complains,  on  one  occasion,  of  being 
"  worn  to  a  thread,"  because  he  has 


been  "  talking  to  a  young  lady  to 
entertain  her." 

Mears,  Charlie,  in  The  Finest 
Story  in  the  World  in  Kipling's  Many 
Inventions,  a  bank  clerk  who  imagines 
himself  a  poet  and  a  story  teller.  In 
his  own  self  he  is  absolutely  without 
literary  gift.  But  we  are  allowed  to 
believe  that  in  some  former  life  he 
had  been  a  Greek  galley-slave.  Every 
now  and  then  he  drags  up  from  the 
dim  recesses  of  his  brain  wondrous 
recollections  which  he  looks  upon  as 
inventions.  Just  as  the  finest  story 
in  the  world  is  being  put  together  bit 
by  bit,  the  chain  is  snapped.  Charlie 
has  "  tasted  the  love  of  woman  that 
kills  remembrance." 

Medamothi,  in  Rabelais's  Panta- 
gruel,  iv,  3  (1545),  an  island  where 
Pantagruel  and  his  fleet  landed  on 
the  fourth  day  of  their  voyage. 
Many  curiosities  were  to  be  seen  here, 
as  "an  echo  drawn  from  life,"  "a 
picture  of  a  man's  voice,"  some  of  the 
"  atoms  "  of  Epicurus,  and  a  sample 
of  Philomela's  needlework.  Meda- 
mothi is  compounded  of  two^  Greek 
words  and  means  "  Never  in  any 
place."  Etymology  and  definition 
kin  it  to  the  word  Utopia. 

Medora,  in  Byron's  poem,  The 
Corsair,  the  wife  of  Conrad  (q.v.), 
who  pined  away  and  died  while  he 
was  imprisoned  by  the  pacha  Seyd. 
In  describing  her  Byron  had  in  mind 
Lady  Frances  Wedderbum  Spencer, 
his  favorite  of  the  hour.  The  lines, 
Remember  him,  when  Passion's  Power, 
and  the  sonnets,  To  Genevra,  were 
written  under  her  spell.  The  Bride 
of  Abydos,  which  was  "  thrown  off  " 
in  four  nights,  was  written  to  divert 
his  mind  from  his  passion  for  this 
lady,  and  it  was  in  her  honour  that 
Medora,  the  Corsair's  bride,  was 
first  named  "  Francesca." 

Medoro,  in  Ariosto's  Orlando  Furi- 
oso  (1516),  a  beautiful  Moorish  youth 
of  himible  origin.  Agramante  took 
him  captive  at  the  siege  of  Jerusalem, 
brought  him  to  Paris  and  made  him 
his  page.  When  the  lad  was  wounded 
Angelica,  his  fellow  countrywoman, 
tended  him,  fell  in  love  with  him, 
married  him  and  eloped  with  him  to 


Megone 


261 


Melema 


Cathay.  Hence  the  madness  of 
Orlando,  who  was  in  love  with 
Angelica. 

Megone,  Mogg,  an  Indian  sachem 
who  at  the  bidding  of  a  white  girl 
brings  her  the  scalp  of  her  seducer, 
but  the  bloody  trophy  diverts  her 
hatred  from  the  seducer  to  his  slayer 
and  she  murders  Megone  in  his  sleep. 

This  Indian  legend  has  been  versi- 
fied by  Whittier. 

Meister,  Wilhelm,  hero  of  Goethe's 
philosophical  romance,  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter's  Apprenticeship  (i 795-1 796),  and 
its  sequel,  Wilhelm  Meister's  Wander- 
ings (Wanderjahre),  the  latter  not 
published  until  1 821-1829.  As  with 
the  drama  of  Faust,  these  two  parts 
of  one  great  whole  may  be  taken  as  a 
sort  of  allegorical  representation  of 
the  life  of  Goethe  or  less  specifically 
the  life  of  the  typical  Man.  This 
interpretation  seems  to  be  implied  in 
Goethe's  own  statement  to  Ecker- 
mann.  ' '  The  critics,"  he  complained, 
'*  seek  a  central  point  which  in  truth 
is  hard  to  find.  I  should  think  a  rich 
manifold  life  brought  close  to  our 
eyes  might  suffice,  without  any  deter- 
mined moral  tendency  which  could 
be  reasoned  upon.  But,  if  this  is 
insisted  upon,  it  may  perhaps  be 
found  in  what  Frederick,  at  the  end, 
says  to  the  hero,  "  Thou  seemest  to 
me  like  Saul,  the  son  of  Kish,  who 
went  out  to  seek  his  father's  asses, 
and  found  a  kingdom!  For  what 
does  the  whole  say,  but  that  man, 
despite  all  his  follies  and  errors,  led 
by  a  higher  hand,  reaches  some  higher 
aim  at  last?" 

A  number  of  brilliant  episodes 
serve  to  present  the  different  stages 
in  Meister's  spiritual  evolution.  The 
son  of  a  German  merchant,  he  falls  in 
with  and  joins  a  troupe  of  strolling 
players.  At  first  the  glitter  of  his 
new  life  attracts  him,  but  the  tinsel 
eventually  reveals  itself.  He  loves 
Marianne  and  has  a  son,  Felix,  by 
her,  but  abandons  both  in  a  fit  of 
unfounded  jealousy.  He  meets  and 
befriends  Mignon  {q.v.),  who  dies  of 
unrequited  passion  for  him.  He 
abandons  the  bohemian  life  for  that 
of  solid  respectability  and  is  initiated 


into  the  ways  of  the  great  world. 
His  development  is  expedited  by 
reclaiming  his  son.  What  women  and 
society  have  failed  to  teach  him  he 
learns  from  little  Felix.  He  marries 
a  lady  of  wealth  and  station  and  turns 
landowner. 

Melaine,  titular  heroine  of  a  narra- 
tive poem  by  N.  P.  Willis,  an  impas- 
sioned and  fine-strung  girl  who  dis- 
covers at  the  altar  that  her  lover  is 
her  brother  and  dies. 

Melbury,  Grace,  in  Thomas 
Hardy's  novel,  The  Woodlanders 
(1887). 

She  is  an  Anna  Kar^nina  called  to  a 
lower  state  of  life.  She  wants  the  earth,  and 
takes  all  she  can  get  of  it,  by  fair  means  or 
foul.  She  had  a  worse  man  for  a  husband 
than  was  Anna  Kar^nina's,  and  a  better  man 
for  a  lover;  thus  she  was  saved  from  actual 
infidelity,  though  by  no  virtue  in  herself. 
Tolstoi  barely  condones  Anna's  fault,  and 
sweeps  her  by  the  judgment  of  conscience 
to  a  fearful  end.  Mr.  Hardy  exalts  the 
spirituality  of  Grace  Melbury,  and  doesn't 
seem  to  think  that  she  commits  an  error 
worth  the  attention  of  conscience.  He 
doesn't  mean,  either,  that  her  husband  shall 
appear  rather  less  offensive  than  she,  yet 
he  does;  for,  having  been  off  a  year  or  so  with 
another  woman,  Fitzpiers  experiences  a 
slight  diffidence  in  inviting  his  wife  to  live 
with  him  again. — N.  Y.  Nation,  May  19, 
1887. 

Melema,  Tito,  in  George  Eliot's 
Romola  (1863),  a  beautiful  young 
Greek,  winning  all  hearts  by  the 
sweetness  of  his  temper  and  the 
charm  of  his  manner,  loving  most 
things,  hating  nothing  but  pain, 
bodily  or  mental;  never  deliberately 
proposing  to  do  anything  cruel  or 
base,  but  descending  step  by  step 
into  cruelty  and  baseness,  simply 
because^  he  tries  to  step  away  from 
everything  unpleasant,  and  betraying 
every  trust  in  him,  simply  because 
he  cares  solely  for  his  own  safety  and 
pleasure.  Among  his  victims  are 
Romola  and  Tessa,  both  of  whom  he 
married,  and  Baldassare,  who  event- 
tually  strangles  him  to  death. 

Mr.  Moncure  D.  Conway  says  that  the 
brilliant  woman  dearly  loved  the  characters 
she  created  even  when  they  were  wicked. 
Her  friend  Sara  Hennell  told  him  that  once 
when  at  her  house  in  London  looking 
at  some  sketches  of  the  characters  in 
Romola,  hanging  on  the  wall,  they  stood 
before  "Tito."     After  a  moment's  silence 


Melisande 


262 


Mendoza 


George  Eliot  said  softly,  as  if  to  herself, 
"The  dear  fellow. ' '  Sara  Hennell  exclaimed , 
"He's  not  a  dear  fellow  at  all,  but  a  very- 
bad  fellow."  "Ah,"  said  "Tito's"  creator, 
with  a  smile,  "I  was  seeing  him  with  the 
eyes  of  'Romola.'" — N.  Y.  Tribune. 

Melisande,  heroine  of  Maurice 
Maeterlinck's  romantic  tragedy,  Pel- 
leas  and  Melisande  (1892),  a  prin- 
cess from  a  strange  land,  married 
offhand  to  Goland,  a  king's  son_  in 
Allemonde,  who  discovers  her  sitting 
disconsolate  in  a  forest.  This  Teutonic 
Francesca  falls  in  love  with  her  hus- 
band's younger  brother  Pelleas  and 
he  with  her.  Goland  suspects — ^his 
jealousy  strangely  mingled  with  love 
for  his  brother  and  his  child  wife; — 
and  when  suspicion  ripens  for  him 
into  certainty  he  kills  Pell6as  and 
wounds  Melisande  so  that  she  dies 
after  premature  delivery  of  a  child. 

M61isande  is  one  of  the  poet's  most  suc- 
cessful full-length  portraits.  She  is  exquis- 
itely girlish,  is  charming  with  her  strange 
undine  airs,  and  is  touched  by  a  singular 
atmosphere  of  the  remote.  Hauptmann  has 
realized  the  same  ethereal  type  in  Rauten- 
delein.  M61isande  is  very  romantic.  At 
times  she  is  on  the  point  of  melting  into  the 
green  tapestry  of  the  forest.  She  is  a  wood- 
land creature.  More  melancholy  than 
Miranda,  she  is  not  without  traces  of  her 
high-bred  temperament;  less  real  than 
Juliet,  she  seems  quite  as  passion-smitten. — 
James  Huneker:    Iconoclasts,  p.  402. 

Mell,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copper  field  (1849),  a  kindly  weakling, 
second  master  at  Mr.  Creakle's 
school,  Salem  House,  who  finds  a 
solace  in  his  flute  for  all  worldly  ills, 
even  for  the  fact  that  his  mother  is 
in  an  almshouse  and  for  Steerforth's 
sneers  at  this  "  degradation." 

Melmoth,  hero  of  C.  R.  Maturin's 
romance,  Melmoth,  the  Wanderer. 

Melmoth  has  bartered  his  soul  with  the 
devil  for  something  like  immortality  and 
other  privileges,  including  the  unusual  one 
of  escaping  his  doom  if  he  can  get  some  one 
to  take  the  bargain  oflE  his  hands.  This 
leads  to  numerous  episodes  in  which  Mel- 
moth attempts  to  obtain  substitutes,  and 
in  one  of  these  the  love-interest  of  the  book 
— the,  of  course  fatal,  love  of  Melmoth  him- 
self for  a  Spanish  Indian  girl,  Immalee,  or 
Isidora — is  related  with  some  real  pathos 
and  passion,  though  with  a  good  deal  of 
mere  sentiment  and  twaddle. — George 
Saintsbury:     The  English  Novel,  p.  186. 

Melnotte,  Claude,  hero  of  Bulwer 
Lytton's  comedy,  The  Lady  of  Lyons 
(1838).     He  is  in  love  with  Pauline 


Deschapelles,  the  proudest  beauty  in 
Lyons.  Being  only  a  poor  gardener's 
son,  he  finds  that  he  has  no  chance  to 
win  her.  Two  other  rejected  suitors, 
Beauseant  and  Glavis,  conspire  with 
him  to  conquer  her  by  strategy. 
Claude,  assuming  to  be  the  Prince  of 
Como,  dupes  the  lady  into  marriage, 
but  is  scornfully  repudiated  when 
Pauline  discovers  the  trick.  He  joins 
the  revolutionary  army  under  the 
name  of  Morier,  rises  to  be  colonel, 
acquires  wealth  and  returns  to  Lyons 
just  in  the  nick  of  time.  Pauline's 
father  is  on  the  eve  of  bankruptcy; 
she  herself  is  on  the  verge  of  matri- 
mony with  the  false  Beauseant. 
Claude  saves  the  situation  and  wins 
the  love  and  admiration  of  his  own 
wife. 

Melun,  in  Shakespeare's  King 
John,  a  French  lord.  Shakespeare 
accepts  from  Matthew  Paris  the 
story  that  before  his  death,  which 
took  place  in  London,  Meliin  revealed 
to  certain  English  barons  that  Louis 
and  16  of  his  earls  and  barons  were 
bound  by  oath,  in  case  England  were 
conquered,  to  kill,  banish  or  imprison 
all  the  English  nobility  as  traitors  or 
rebels. 

Melville,  Julia,  in  Sheridan's  com- 
edy. The  Rivals  (1775),  a  noble- 
hearted  girl  in  love  with  the  jealous 
Faulkland,  and  retaining  a  single- 
minded  devotion  to  him  despite  all 
his  unjust  suspicions  and  galling 
innuendos. 

Mencia  of  Mosquera,  in  Gil  Bias, 
i,  11-14,  a  novel  by  LeSage.  Her 
husband,  Don  Alvo  de  Mells,  was 
forced  to  flee  after  slaying  a  friend 
in  a  quarrel.  He  was  reported  dead 
and  Mencia  married  the  Marquis  of 
Guardia,  who  took  her  to  his  castle 
near  Biirgos.  Here  among  the  under 
gardeners  she  recognized  Don  Alvo. 
Eloping  with  him,  he  v/as  slain  by  a 
gang  of  robbers  who,  after  immuring 
her  in  their  cave,  sent  her  back  to  the 
Marquis  of  Guardia.  But  she  found 
him  dying  of  grief  and  after  closing 
his  eyes  retired  to  a  convent. 

Mendoza,  Isaac,  in  Sheridan's 
comedy.  The  Duenna  (1775),  a  Portu- 
guese Jew,  wise  in  his  own  conceit, 


Mephistopheles 


263 


Mephistophilis 


whose  fancied  wit  is  ever  outwitted 
by  those  he  would  make  his  dupes. 
"I'm  cunning,  I  fancy,"  he  chuckles 
to  himself,"  a  very  cunning  dog  aint 
I?  a  sly  little  villain,  eh?  a  bit  roguish; 
he  must  be  very  wide  awake  who  can 
take  Isaac  in!  "  He  meets  Louisa, 
whom  he  had  intended  to  make  his 
wife;  she  dupes  him  into  the  belief 
that  she  is  Clara  Guzman;  he  sends 
his  rival  Antonio  to  the  supposed 
Clara  and  she  marries  him;  he  mis- 
takes Louisa's  duenna  for  Louisa  and 
elopes  with  her. 

Mephistopheles  (a  name  variously 
spelled  in  German  myth  and  English 
drama  until  the  popularity  of  Goethe's 
Faust  crystallized  this  form),  one  of 
the  seven  chief  devils  in  the  demon- 
ology  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  second 
of  the  fallen  angels  and  the  most 
powerful,  after  Satan,  of  all  the 
infernal  host.  Moncure  D.  Conway 
{Pedigree  of  the  Devil)  trace^  his 
lineage  back  to  Asmodeus  {q.v.). 
Under  his  present  name,  however, 
he  was  unknown  to  the  public  until 
the  thirteenth  century,  and  in  his 
modem  quality  as  the  familiar  demon 
of  Faust  he  made  his  first  literary 
appearance  in  an  anonymous  German 
book  published  (1587)  by  Johann 
Spies.  Next  year,  under  the  form 
Mephistophilis  {q.v.),  Marlowe  intro- 
duced him  to  an  English  audience  in 
his  tragedy.  Dr.  Faustus.  An  ety- 
mology endorsed  by  Conway  makes 
the  name  a  hybrid  compound  (Latin, 
mephitis,  and  Greek,  philos)  meaning 
a  lover  of  bad  smells.  Dunzer  sug- 
gests three  Greek  rootwords:  me,  not; 
photos,  light,  and  philos,  love  =  not 
loving  light. 

Be  his  origin  what  it  may,  he  is  best 
known  to  us  as  the  cold,  cynical,  relent- 
less fiend  of  Goethe's  Faust, — the 
composite  sixteenth  century  devil 
fused  into  a  new  and  more  coherent 
individuality  by  the  typical  genius  of 
the  early  nineteenth.  In  the  old 
Faust  legends  Mephistopheles's  char- 
acter is  simple.  He  is  a  fiend,  ma- 
licious, malignant  and  supematurally 
powerful,  who  executes  Faust's  be- 
hests in  order  to  secure  his  soul. 
Marlowe  invested  him  with  a  melan- 


choly dignity  that  may  have  sug- 
gested to  Milton  some  of  the  traits 
of  his  Satan.  Goethe's  conception 
marked  a  new  departiure.  In  the 
first  fragment  of  his  Faust  (published 
1790,  but  written  earlier),  Mephis- 
topheles has  a  marked  individuality. 
Cynical  and  materialistic,  but  finding 
a  man's  delight  in  action  and  adven- 
ture, he  seems  supernatural  only  by 
virtue  of  his  magical  feats.  Succinctly 
summed  up,  he  is  the  spirit  of  unrest, 
denial  and  contradiction  of  mockery 
and  self -mockery,  in  the  dual  nattire 
of  man,  whose  higher  self  is  typified 
by  Faust.  His  mission  is  to  destroy 
in  order  that  Faust  may  rebuild. 
Because  he  rejoices  in  destruction  for 
its  own  sake,  he  is  the  better  fitted  to 
perform  his  God-appointed  task.  In 
the  history  of  humanity  he  appears 
and  reappears  at  all  crises  which  call 
for  a  renewal  of  the  old  in  a  higher 
form.  This  conception  lies  immanent 
in  the  words  put  by  Goethe  into  his 
mouth:  "I  am  the  spirit  which 
denies!  Which  always  wills  the  bad 
and  does  the  good."  It  is  artistically 
worked  out  to  its  end  in  the  over- 
throw of  Mephistopheles  and  the 
triumph  of  Faust,  as  shown  in  the 
last  scene  of  the  second  part  published 
in  1825. 

Goethe  was  too  sure  an  artist  not  to  see 
the  danger  of  dealing  with  mere  abstractions 
and,  though  Mephistopheles  is  the  embodi- 
ment of  an  idea,  his  external  traits  are 
modelled  from  concrete  personalities.  Per- 
haps Voltaire  was  to  some  extent  in  Goethe's 
mind, — Voltaire  whom  in  his  childhood  he 
could  have  strangled  for  his  irreverent  treat- 
ment of  the  Bible.  Grimm  suggests  Herder 
as  the  prototype,  but  he  makes  a  little  too 
much  of  this  idea.  Goethe  himself  ha3 
indicated  Merck,  a  man  who,  unproductive 
himself  and  of  a  strongly  marked  negative 
tendency,  took  a  malicious  delight  in  mock- 
ing at  the  efforts  and  aspirations  of  others. — 
Walsh:    Faust,  the  Legend  and  the  Poem. 

Mephistophilis,  in  Marlowe's 
drama.  Tragical  History  of  Dr.  Faus- 
tus (1588),  marks  the  first  appearance 
of  that  fiend  (see  Mephistopheles) 
on  the  English  stage. 

The  melancholy  figure  of  Mephistophilis 
has  a  certain  grandeur,  but  he  is  not  the 
Tempter,  according  to  the  common  con- 
ception, creeping  to  his  purpose  with  the 
cunning  of  the  serpent;  nor  is  he  the  cold 


Mercedes 


264 


Merrilies 


ironical  "spirit  that  denies;'!  he  Is  more  like 
the  Satan  of  Byron,  with  a  touch  of  piety 
and  much  repentance.  The  language  he 
addresses  to  Faustus  is  such  as  would  rather 
frighten  than  seduce  him. — G.  H.  Lewes; 
Lifeof  Goethe  iiSSS)' 

Mercedes,  heroine  and  title  of  a 
drama  (1883),  by  T.  B.  Aldrich.  The 
French  soldiery  have  invaded  her 
native  town  in  Spain.  Poisoned  wine 
has  been  prepared  for  them.  To  dis- 
arm their  suspicions  she  drinks  of  it 
and  gives  her  baby  to  drink.  When 
twenty  of  the  Frenchmen  have  fol- 
lowed suit  the  baby  grows  livid  and 
dies  before  their  eyes. 

Mercutio,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy 
of  Romeo  and  Juliet  (1598),  a  kins- 
man to  Prince  Escalus  and  friend  to 
Romeo.  He  is  an  elegant  trifier,  a 
light-hearted  mocker  who  has  not 
earnestness  enough  for  strong  passion 
or  deep  conviction,  a  product,  by 
reaction,  of  ItaUan  life  where  excess 
of  sentiment  evokes  the  scofiEer  at 
sentiment.  His  chief  attribute  is 
humor,  coupled  with  a  light,  airy 
fancy  and  a  tendency  to  puns  and 
conceits.  He  always  sees  the  ridicu- 
lous side  of  things  and  greets  it  with 
a  laugh,  light,  airy  and  mercurial — 
like  his  name.    See  Tybalt. 

Oh!  how  shall  I  describe  that  exquisite 
ebullience  and  ^overflow  of  youthful  life, 
wafted  on  over  the  laughing  waves  of  pleas- 
ure and  prosperity,  as  a  wanton  beauty, 
that  distorts  the  face  on  which  she  knows 
her  lover  is  gazing  enraptured,  and  wrinkles 
her  forehead  in  the  triumph  of  its  smooth- 
ness! Wit  ever  wakeful;  fancy  busy,  and 
procreatlve  as  an  insect;  courage;  an  easy 
mind,  that,  without  cares  of  its  own,  is  at 
once  disposed  to  laugh  away  those  of  others, 
and  yet  to  be  interested  in  them — these  and 
all  congenial  qualities,  melting  into  the 
common  copula  of  them  all — the  man  of 
rank  and  the  gentleman,  with  all  its  excel- 
lences and  all  its  weaknesses — constitute 
the  character  of  Mercutio!" — Coleridge. 

Mercy,  in  the  second  part  of  Bun- 
yan's  Pilgrim's  Progress  (1684),  a 
young  woman  who  accompanied 
Christiana  on  her  pilgrimage.  At  the 
Wicket  Gate  she  swooned  for  fear  she 
might  be  denied  admission,  but  her 
fears  were  unnecessary.  Mr.  Brisk 
would  fain  have  married  her,  but 
desisted  when  he  learned  that  she 
was  poor,  and  she  became  the  wife 
of  Christiana's  eldest  son,  Matthew. 


Merdle,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  novel. 
Little  Dorrit  (1857),  a  banker  who 
was  hailed  as  the  "  Master  Mind  of 
the  Age,"  but  developed  into  "  the 
greatest  forger  and  greatest  thief  that 
ever  cheated  the  gallows  "  by  suicide. 
Evidently  there  is  some  reminiscence 
here  of  the  character  and  career  of 
Hudson  "  The  Railway  King." 

Meredith,  Janice,  heroine  and  title 
of  a  romance  (1900)  of  the  American 
Revolution  by  Paul  Leicester  Ford. 
The  daughter  of  an  uncompromising 
Tory,  she  falls  in  love  with  Charles 
Fownes,  a  man  of  gentle  birth  but 
fallen  fortunes,  who  has  been  indent- 
ured to  her  father  as  one  of  a  ship- 
load of  convicts  brought  over  from 
England  to  New  Brunswick,  N.  J. 
Her  fidelity  to  her  lover  and  to  the 
American  cause  land  her  as  a  captive 
first  in  one  camp  and  then  in  the 
other,  until  her  status  is  officially 
recognized  by  General  Washington. 
Her  lover,  whose  real  name  turns  out 
to  be  Brereton,  enlists  under  Washing- 
ton and  has  risen  to  the  rank  of 
general  when  they  are  formally 
afi&anced. 

Merle,  Madame,  in  Henry  James's 
novel,  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady,  a 
plausible  lady  posing  as  a  model  of 
propriety,  yet  in  reality  the  mistress 
of  a  married  man  and  the  mother  of 
an  illegitimate  daughter  who,  in  all 
the  innocence  of  ignorance,  is  being 
brought  up  by  her  unsuspecting 
stepmother. 

Merman,  Forsaken,  The,  in  Mat- 
thew Arnold's  poem  of  that  name, 
a  Sea  King  married  to  a  mortal 
maiden  named  Margaret.  She  for- 
sook him  and  her  children  under  the 
Christian  conviction  that  she  must 
return  from  his  kingdom  beneath  the 
sea  to  the  upper  world  to  pray  for 
her  soul. 

Merrilies,  Meg,  In  Guy  Mannering, 
one  of  Scott's  weirdest  and  most 
effective  creations.  An  aged  gipsy, 
half  sibyl,  half  lunatic,  she  had  been 
young  Mannering's  nurse  in  infancy, 
and  she  is  the  first  to  recognize  him 
when,  all  ignorant  of  his  origin,  he 
returns  as  Henry  Bertram  to  the 
home  of  his  unsuspecting  kindred — 


Mertotim 


265 


Michael 


the  place  whence  he  had  been  kid- 
napped. 

She  is  most  akin  to  the  witches  of  Mac- 
beth, with  some  traits  of  the  ancient  Sibyl 
ingrafted  on  the  coarser  stock  of  a  gipsy  of 
the  last  century.  •  Though  not  absolutely 
in  nature,  however,  she  must  be  allowed  to 
be  a  very  imposing  and  emphatic  personage, 
and  to  be  mingled  both  with  the  business 
and  the  scenery  of  the  piece  with  the  greatest 
possible  skill  and  effect.— Francis  Jeffrey: 
Eisays. 

Old  Meg  she  was  a  Gipsy, 

And  liv'd  upon  the  Moors: 
Her  bed  it  was  the  brown  heath  turf. 

And  her  house  was  out  of  doors. 

Old  Meg  was  brave  as  Margaret  Queen 

And  tall  as  Amazon: 
An  old  red  blanket  cloak  she  wore; 

A  chip  hat  had  she  on. 
God  rest  her  aged  bones  somewhere — 

She  died  full  long  agone! 

Keats;    Meg  M  err  Hies  (1844). 

Mertoum,  Mordant,  in  Scott's 
novel,  The  Pirate,  son  of  Basil 
Mertoiim,  an  ex-pirate,  who  loves 
and  eventually  marries  Brenda  Troil. 

Messala,  in  Gen.  Lew  Wallace's 
Ben  Hut,  a  Tale  of  the  Christ  (1880), 
a  young  Roman  patrician,  treacher- 
ous and  supercilious,  despising  Ben 
Hut  because  he  is  a  Jew,  but  feigning 
friendship  until  the  time  comes  when 
he  can  betray  him  to  the  galleys  and 
seize  upon  his  property.  Ben  Hur 
achieves  a  long-nurtured  vengeance  in 
the  famous  chariot  race,  where  he 
defeats  Messala  and  maims  him  with 
his  chariot  wheel. 

Meyrick,  Hans,  in  George  Eliot's 
Daniel  Deronda,  a  friend  of  the  hero, 
a  volatile  artist  of  German  blood  who 
owns  himself  a  dilettante  in  virtue 
and  whose  improvised  words  even  in 
sorrowful  moments  have  inevitably 
some  drollery.  He  introduces  Daniel 
to  his  household: — the  mother  keen 
and  sensible;  the  sisters  all  open- 
hearted  and  unselfish,  and  each  with 
a  separate  little  oddity. 

Micawber,  Wilkins,  in  Dickens's 
David  Copper  field  (1849),  an  eccentric 
individual,  law-writer  to  Uriah  Heep, 
whose  villainy  he  eventually  exposes, 
who,  with  his  adoring  wife,  Emma, 
furnishes  the  broadest  fun  to  the 
novel.  Unpractical,  visionary,  ever 
buoyant  and  self-satisfied^  under  the 
most  distressing  and  himiiliating  cir- 


ciunstances,  he  reproduces  Dickens's 
own  father  not  only  in  character,  but 
in  the  principal  incidents  of  his 
amusing  career.  Forster's  Life  of 
Dickens  (1871)  first  revealed  this 
fact  to  the  pubhc.  The  continual 
struggle  with  bad  luck,  the  shabby 
devices  for  eking  out  a  genteel  exist- 
ence; the  repeated  compromises  with 
creditors,  the  final  crash,  and  the 
sojourn  in  the  debtors'  prison,  and 
then  the  court  of  bankruptcy — not 
only  were  these  facts  common  to  the 
career  of  Wilkins  Micawber  and  John 
Dickens,  but  also  such  minor  matters 
as  the  petition  of  the  debtors  to  the 
throne, — "  not  for  the  abolition  of 
imprisonment  for  debt,  as  David 
Copperfield  relates,  but  for  the  less 
dignified  but  more  accessible  boon  of 
a  bounty  to  drink  his  Majesty's 
health  on  his  Majesty's  forthcoming 
birthday," — and  that  well-known 
financial  statement  by  Mr.  Micawber, 
that  the  difference  between  misery 
and  happiness  lay  in  the  odd  pence 
of  an  income  overspent  or  underspent. 

The  Micawbers  live  better  on  nothing 
than  most  people  do  on  a  little;  they  fluctu- 
ate between  tears  and  smiles ;  they  pass  from 
despair  to  hot  punch,  and  from  the  immedi- 
ate prospect  of  starvation  to  a  sanguine 
gaiety.  Mr.  Micawber  survives  a  thousand 
contingencies  when  his  flower  had  been 
cankered.  A  hundred  times  has  the  die 
been  cast  and  the  flower  been  cankered,  yet 
a  hundred  times  he  emerges  buoyant  and 
cheery.  Alnaschar  is  nothing  to  him,  in  a 
forlorn  tenement,  beyond  the  City  Road: 
he  calculated  the  expense  of  putting  out  a 
bow  window  from  his  aircastle  in  Picadilly. 
As  to  exterior,  Mr.  Micawber  is  stout  and 
bold;  he  wears  shabby  clothes,  an  enormous 
shirt-collar  and  an  eyeglass  dangling  for 
ornament,  not  use. — E.  P.  Whipple. 

Michael,  in  the  narrative  poem  of 
that  name  by  William  Wordsworth, 
a  herdsman  near  Grasmere  whose 
toil  and  vigilance  had  cleared  away 
from  debt  his  heritage  of  a  few  acres, 
but  who  lost  half  his  Httle  all  by  the 
failure  of  a  nephew  for  whom  he  was 
surety.  He  received  his  death  blow 
by  the  subsequent  defalcation  of  his 
only  son,  the  child  of  his  middle 
period,  the  pride  and  hope  of  his  age, 
who  had  gone  to  London  with  high 
hopes  and  noble  aims,  but  had  fallen 
a  victim  to  metropoUtan  temptations. 


Midas 


266 


Mignon 


Midas,  Sir  Georgius,  a  favorite  fig- 
ure in  the  society  caricatures  which 
George  DuMaurier  contributed  to 
the  London  Punch.  The  artist  con- 
fided to  a  friend  that  he  was  drawn 
from  life.  It  is  to  be  hoped  he  never 
recognized  himself.  Sir  Georgius  is  a 
vulgar,  purse-proud  parvenu  of  hesi- 
tant h's,  but  of  unlimited  self- 
confidence  and  self-assertion  until 
brought  face  to  face_  with  a  real 
aristocrat,  when  he  sinks  into  the 
ordinary  British  toady. 

Middleton,  Clara,  in  George  Mere- 
dith's novel.  The  Egoist,  a  high-spir- 
ited, clever  girl,  daughter  of  the 
learned  and  sententious  Dr.  Middle- 
ton.  She  fancies  herself  in  love  with 
Sir  Willoughby  Patteme,  but  breaks 
off  the  engagement  when  longer  ac- 
quaintance reveals  his  self-centred 
pride.  While  Laetitia  Dale's  story 
exposes  the  cruel  side  of  egotism 
Clara's  brings  to  light  the  absurdity 
of  it.  With  her  sense  of  fun  and 
healthy  instincts  of  liberty  and  en- 
joyment, the  distress  Sir  Willoughby 
occasions  her  is  nothing  to  the 
agonies  she  makes  him  undergo. 

Middleton,  Ellen,  titular  heroine 
of  a  novel  (1844),  by  Lady  Giorgianna 
Fullerton.  In  a  momentary  fit  of 
anger,  when  a  girl,  she  had  accident- 
ally killed,  a  child.  Two  persons 
know  the  secret.  Throughout  her 
married  life  she  is  pursued  by  the 
malice  of  one  and  the  mischievous 
advocacy  of  the  other,  a  man  who 
loves  her.  The  novel  presents  a  vivid 
picture  of  Ellen's  fear  and  penitence, 
flight  and  peaceful  death. 

Middleton,  Sir  John,  in  Jane  Aus- 
ten's novel,  Sense  and  Sensibility,  the 
squire  of  the  neighborhood  where  Mrs. 
Dash  wood  settles  with  her  daughters. 

Sir  John  and  Lady  Middleton  have  also 
their  several  claims  to  consideration,  though 
there  is  amiability  about  Sir  John,  with  his 
passion  for  what  he  calls  "little  hops,"  and 
for  collecting  parties  of  young  people  to 
eat  ham  and  chicken  out  of  doors,"  even 
in  late  October.  Lady  Middleton  was  "re- 
served, cold,  and  had  nothing  to  say  for 
herself  beyond  the  most  commonplace 
inquiry  or  remark."  But  she  had  a  greedy 
eagerness  for  flattery,  and  even  the  elder 
Miss  Steele,  with  her  terrible  talk  of  con- 
quests and  "smart  beaux,"  knows  how  to 
get  invited  to  stay  with  her  two  months. 


Miggles,  heroine  of  a  story  of  that 
name  by  F.  Bret  Harte  in  volume, 
Luck  of  Roaring  Camp^ 

"Miggles,"  who  retires  into  the  wilds 
with  the  paralyzed  wreck  of  the  man  who 
had  been  good  to  her  in  her  prosperous  but 
naughty  days,  and  who  will  not  throw  a  sop 
to  Mrs.  Grundy  by  marrying  him,  because 
then  she  would  be  bound  to  do  what  she  did 
of  her  own  accord — is  another  instance  of 
good  in  bad;  a  diamond  picked  out  of  the 
gutter.  There  is  no  talk  with  her  about 
regret  for  the  past — only  practice.  When 
the  coach  (storm-bound)  has  left  her  dwel- 
ling, and  the  passengers  arrive  at  the  next 
halt,  and  the  judge,  "solemnly  taking  off 
his  white  hat,"  and  making  sure  that  all  the 
glasses  are  full,  says:  "Here's  to  Miggles. 
God  bless  her!"  it  would  have  been  a  hard 
heart  indeed  that  would  not  add,  Amen! — 
Atlantic  Monthly. 

Miggs,  Miss,  in  Dickens's  novel 
Barnaby  Rudge  (1841),  the  hand- 
maiden and  comforter  of  Mrs.  Var- 
den.  Tall  and  gaunt  and  shrewish, 
she  holds  all  mankind  in  contempt, 
making  a  secret  exception,  however, 
of  Sim  Tappertit,  who  scorns  her. 
She  upholds  her  mistress  as  a  suffer- 
ing martyr,  "  the  mildest,  amiablist, 
forgivingest-sperited,  longest-suffer- 
ingest  female  in  existence,"  and 
denounces  poor  Gabriel  Varden  as 
an  inhuman  Nero.  Baffled  in  all  her 
matrimonial  schemes,  she  ended  her 
life  as  female  turnkey  to  a  county 
Bridewell. 

Mignon,  in  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter's  Apprenticeship,  a  mysterious 
Italian  maiden  of  peculiar  and  elfish 
charm,  daughter  of  a  wandering 
harpist.  Wilhelm  rescues  her  in  her 
girlhood  out  of  the  hands  of  rope 
dancers  whose  manager  had  cruelly 
mistreated  her,  and  from  the  day  of 
her  rescue  the  slender,  black-haired, 
star-eyed  maid  clings  to  him  with 
ardent  but  unconfessed  and  unre- 
quited love  which  finall}'  kills  her. 
Walter  Scott  in  Fenella  and  Victor 
Hugo  in  Esmeralda  have  imitated 
this  weirdly  attractive  character. 

In  Mignon  and  the  Harpist  Goethe  has 
introduced  into  his  novel  those  mysterious 
forces,  beyond  the  reach  of  human  knowl- 
edge and  control,  which  play  a  significant 
part  in  our  lives.  The  one  rises  up  out  of 
ourselves,  it  lies  in  the  invisible  depths  in 
our  own  souls;  this  force  is  personified  in 
Mignon.  The  other  lies  outside  us,  in  the 
influence  of  divinely  favored  spirits,  whose 


Mikado 


267 


Millerin 


highest  and  most  genuine  representative 
is  the  poet;  it  appears  as  tne  Harpist. 
Bielschowsky:  Life  of  Goethe,  ii,  230. — 
Atlantic  Monthly. 

Mikado,  The,  hero  of  a  comic  opera 
of  that  name  by  William  S.  Gilbert, 
music  by  Arthur  Sullivan.  The  plot 
turns  upon  the  complications  which 
follow  upon  the  crusade  this  mythical 
monarch  of  Japan  had  instituted 
against  flirting: 

So  he  decreed  in  words  succinct. 
That  all  who  flirted,  leered  or  winked, 
Unless  connubially  linked. 
Should  forthwith  be  beheaded. 

Milan,  Duke  of,  in  Massinger's 
tragedy  of  that  name,  is  a  high- 
minded  gentleman  inordinately  fond 
of  his  wife,  Marcelia. 

He  is  represented  as  excessively  uxorious, 
and  his  passion  takes  this  very  disagreeable 
turn  of  posthumous  jealousy.  He  has  in- 
structed Francisco  to  murder  the  wife  whom 
he  adores,  in  case  of  his  own  death  during 
the  war,  and  thus  to  make  sure  that  she 
could  not  marry  anybody  else.  On  his 
return  the  wife,  who  has  been  informed  by 
the  treachery  of  Francisco  of  this  pleasant 
arrangement,  is  naturally  rather  cool  to 
him;  whereupon  he  flies  into  a  rage  .  .  . 
His  affection  returns  in  another  scene,  but 
only  in  order  to  increase  his  jealousy,  and 
on  hearing  Francisco's  slander  he  proceeds 
to  stab  his  wife  out  of  hand.  It  is  the  action 
of  a  weak  man  in  a  passion,  not  of  a  noble 
nature  tortured  to  madness. — Leslie 
Stephen:    Hours  in  a  Library. 

Mlldmay,  Frank,  the  autobio- 
graphic hero  of  Captain  Marryat's 
novel,  Frank  Mildmay,  or  the  Naval 
Officer  (1829).  He  is  autobiographic 
in  two  senses,  for  not  Only  is  Mildmay 
made  to  write  his  own  story,  but  the 
story  itself  is  in  many  respects  that 
of  Marryat's  own  early  life,  including 
his  entrance  into  the  navy  as  a  mid- 
shipman under  Lord  Cochrane,  after- 
wards Earl  of  Dtmdonald,  and  his 
service  in  the  Mediterranean,  at 
Walcheren  and  in  the  Burmese  War 
of  1824.  Lord  Cochrane  appears  in 
the  novel  under  the  transparent 
mask  of  an  initial. 

Millamant,  in  Congreve's  comedy, 
The  Way  of  the  World,  a  fashionable 
belle,  in  love  with  Mirabell  and  cap- 
turing him  by  the  witchery  of  her 
very  faults. 

Millamant  is  the  perfect  model  of 
the  accomplished  fine  lady:    the  ideal 


heroine  of  the  comedy  of  high  life, 
who  arrives  at  the  height  of  indiffer- 
ence to  everything  from  the  height 
of  satisfaction;  to  whom  pleasure  is 
as  familiar  as  the  air  she  draws;  ele- 
gance worn  as  a  part  of  her  dress;  wit 
the  habitual  language  which  she  hears 
and  speaks;  love,  a  matter  of  course; 
and  who  has  nothing  to  hope  or  to 
fear,  her  own  caprice  being  the  only 
law  to  herself,  and  rule  to  those  about 
her.  Her  words  seem  composed  of 
amorous  sighs — her  looks  are  glanced 
at  prostrate  admirers  or  envious 
rivals.  She  refines  on  her  pleasures 
to  satiety;  and  is  almost  stifled  in  the 
incense  that  is  offered  to  her  person, 
her  wit,  her  beauty  and  her  fortime. 
Miller,  Daisy.  "  Daisy  "  is  the 
family  nickname  for  Anna  Miller, 
heroine  of  Henry  James's  short  story, 
Daisy  Miller  (1878).  A  young  girl 
from  Schenectady,  *'  strikingly,  ad- 
mirably pretty,"  who  travels  about 
Europe  with  her  placid  mother  and 
her  terrible  little  brother,  Randolph, 
and  meets  premature  death  at  Rome. 

A  girl  of  the  later  eighteen-seventies,  sent 
with  such  a  mother  as  hers  to  Europe  by  a 
father  who  remains  making  money  in 
Schenectady,  after  no  more  experience  of 
the  world  than  she  had  got  in  her  native 
town,  and  at  a  number  of  New  York  dinners 
among  people  of  like  tradition;  uncultivated 
but  not  rude,  reckless  but  not  bold,  inex- 
pugnably  ignorant  of  the  conventional  right, 
and  spiritedly  resentful  of  control  by  cri- 
terions  that  offend  her  own  sense  of  things, 
she  goes  about  Europe  doing  exactly  what 
she  would  do  at  home,  from  an  innocence 
as  guileless  as  that  which  shaped  her  con- 
science in  her  native  town.  She  knows  no 
harm,  and  she  means  none;  she  loves  life, 
and  singing  and  talking  and  dancing  and 
"attentions,"  but  she  is  no  flirt,  and  she  is 
essentially  and  infinitely  far  from  worse. — 
W.  D.  HowELLs:    Heroines  of  Fiction. 

Millerin,  Luise,  heroine  of  Schil- 
ler's drama,  Love  and  Intrigue.  A  poor 
musician's  daughter,  she  is  loved  by 
Ferdinand  von  Walther,  son  of  the 
prince  in  one  of  the  petty  German 
principalities  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. His  father  makes  no  demur  so 
long  as  he  believes  Ferdinand  con- 
templates a  mere  liaison,  but  is  horri- 
fied (like  Major  Pendennis  in  the 
case  of  Arthur)  when  he  finds  his 
intentions  are  honorable.  He  arrests 
father   Millerin   and   persuades   the 


Mills 


268 


Miranda 


daughter  that  she  can  save  him  only 
by  writing  a  compromising  letter  to 
a  court  libertine.  She  consents  and 
swears  never  to  reveal  the  truth. 
Ferdinand  refuses  to  beUeve  that  the 
letter  is  genuine,  but  Luise  remains 
faithful  to  her  oath. 

Mills,  Miss,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield  (1849),  the  bosom  friend 
of  Dora  Spenlow.  She  is  fond  of 
posing  as  a  victim  of  blighted  love, 
an  outcast  in  **  the  desert  of  Sa- 
hara." 

Millwood,  Sarah,  in  George  Lillo's 
tragedy,  Geor^g  Barnwell  (1732),  the 
courtesan  who  seduces  George  into 
robbery  and  murder  and  then  in- 
forms against  him.    See  Barnwell. 

Milly,  in  a  narrative  poem  by 
Adelaide  Anne  Procter,  Milly' s  Ex- 
piation (1862),  is  a  noble-minded  Irish 
girl  whose  lover  is  accused  of  murder. 
She  saves  him  by  a  falsehood  on  the 
witness  stand  and  subsequent  events 
prove  him  to  be  innocent.  But  to  the 
surprise  of  all  she  refuses  to  marry 
him.  Only  her  lover  and  the  parish 
priest  who  tells  the  story  know  that 
this  is  her  self-imposed  expiation  for 
the  perjury  she  had  committed. 

Milo,  in  Troilus  and  Cressida,  ii,  3, 
an  athlete  of  Crotona,  a  Greek  city 
of  Southern  Italy,  one  of  whose  feats 
was  the  carrying  of  a  living  bull  on 
his  shoulders  through  the  race  course 
at  Olympia,  anachronistically  intro- 
duced.   See  Milo  in  vol.  11. 

Milton,  John,  is  the  hero  of  a  dra- 
matic poem,  Milton,  by  Bulwer- 
Lytton,  based  upon  the  legend  of  an 
Italian  lady  who  chanced  to  find  the 
young  poet  asleep  on  some  primrose 
bank  of  his  native  country.  Struck 
with  admiration,  she  left  by  his  side 
an  epigram  appreciative  of  his  singu- 
lar beauty  which  she  borrowed  from 
Guarini,  a  poet  of  her  own  land.  The 
story  is  a  myth  belonging  to  the  lives 
of  other  poets  besides  Milton.  Bul- 
wer  makes  Milton  meet  the  lady  in 
his  subsequent  Journey  to  Italy.  In 
old  age  she  again  crosses  the  seas  to 
look  her  last  upon  the  love  of  her 
youth.  Francois  Coppee  tells  the 
story  in  a  different  fashion  in  Le 
Passant  {The  Passerby). 


Minna,  in  Scott's  novel,  The  Pirate^ 
is,  with  her  sister  Brenda,  one  of  the 
heroines. 

Minnehaha  (Indian,  Laughing 
Water),  in  Longfellow's  poem,  Hia- 
watha, the  wife  of  the  titular  hero  and 
daughter  of  the  arrow-maker  of  the 
Dacotahs.  She  was  named  after  a 
waterfall  between  St.  Anthony  and 
Fort  Snelling. 

Mirabel,  in  Beatmiont  and 
Fletcher's  comedy,  The  Wild  Goose 
Chase  (1652),  a  travelled  Italianate, 
gentleman,  a  cynical  philanderer  who 
loves  women  but  abhors  marriage. 
He  is  pursued  matrimonially  by 
Oriana,  the  "  witty  follower  of  the 
chase,"  who  employs  artifices  crude 
and  coarse  in  the  effort  to  entrap  him. 
When  the  ingenuity  of  the  dramatists 
is  exhausted  Mirabel  succumbs  to 
Oriana's  wiles.  Farquhar,  in  The 
Inconstant  (1702),  borrowed  the 
names  and  modernized  the  theme. 
His  Oriana  is  assisted  in  her  matri- 
monial desires  by  the  strategy  of  Old 
Mirabel,  and  the  combined  force  of 
concupiscence  and  chicanery  finally 
drives  yotmg  Mirabel  into  the  net 
from  which  he  shies. 

Mirabell,  Edward,  in  Congreve's 
comedy,  The  Way  of  the  World  (1700). 

Mirabella,  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Qiieene,  vi,  6-8  (1596),  afairmaidwho, 
because  of  scorn  and  pride  and  the 
cruelties  she  had  inflicted  upon  her 
lovers,  was  condemned  in  Cupid's 
judgment  hall  to  ride  through  the 
world  clad  in  mourning  weeds, 
mounted  on  a  mangy  jade  and  ac- 
companied by  a  lewd  fool  called 
Disdain  until  "  she  had  saved  as 
many  lovers  as  she  had  slain."  It  is 
conjectured  that  in  this  character 
Spenser  paid  a  back-handed  com- 
pliment to  the  lady  who  had  jilted 
him  in  real  life  and  whom  he  ad- 
dressed poetically  as  Rosalind  {q.v.). 

Miranda,  in  J.  R.  Lowell's  Fable  for 
Critics  (1848),  a  Boston  bas-bleu  in 
classic  apparel. 

She  is  an  evident  satif?  upon  Mar- 
garet Fuller,  afterwards  Countess 
Ossoli  (18 10-1850),  who  also  fur- 
nished some  hints  for  Hawthorne's 
Zenobia   {q.v.).     Before  and  shortly 


Miranda 


269 


Mirvan 


after  her  early  and  tragical  death 
Margaret  Fuller  had  a  reputation  as 
great  and  peculiar,  if  not  as  extensive, 
as  susceptible  ambition  and  feminine 
vanity  could  desire.  Her  personal 
cjualities  endeared  her  to  a  circle  of 
intimate  friends,  by  whose  worship 
she  was  no  doubt  spoilt.  How  im- 
patiently her  pretensions  were  en- 
dured, and  how  deeply  her  somewhat 
offensive  assumption  of  superiority 
and  her  naive  but  intense  egotism 
were  resented,  by  outsiders,  may  be 
seen  ^  in  the  severity  of  Lowell's 
merdless  satire,  "  Miranda  "  being 
almost  the  only  writer  of  whom  he 
speaks  with  anything  Uke  aversion  or 
bitterness. 

Miranda,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy. 
The  Tempest  (1609),  daughter  of 
Prosper©,  who  brings  her  up  on  an 
enchanted  island  where  her  only  com- 
panions are  such  monsters  as  Caliban 
and  such  ethereal  sprites  as  Ariel. 
Consequently  her  maiden  innocence 
and  ignorance  are  only  too  likely  to 
be  captivated  by  the  first  man  she 
sees.  Luckily  it  is  the  gentle  and 
noble  Prince  Ferdinand,  son  of  her 
uncle  Antonio,  the  usurping  duke, 
who  first  falls  across  her  path  through 
shipwreck  and  fulfils  her  destiny. 

Mireio,  titular  heroine  of  a  Proven- 
gal  poem  by  Fr^d^ric  Mistral.  Be- 
cause of  her  love  for  Vincen,  the  poor 
weaver's  son,  she  rejects  more  eligible 
suitors.  Her  father,  learning  the 
reason,  furiously  swears  she  shall  never 
see  her  lover  again.  Then  in  the 
night  she  remembers  that  Vincen 
once  said  if  ever  she  was  in  trouble 
she  must  go  to  the  three  Saint  Maries 
of  Baux;  and  so  she  rises  and  flies,  and 
crossing  the  wide  sea-meadows  to 
their  chapel  on  the  seashore,  is  sim- 
struck  and  dies  there,  just  as  father, 
mother,  and  lover  arrive  in  search  of 
her.  The  best  English  translation  is 
by  Harriet  W.  Preston  (Boston,  1872). 
An  opera  entitled  Miretlle  was  set  to 
music  by  Gounod  in  1864.  The 
original  version  was  in  five  acts  and 
followed  the  poem  to  its  tragic  termi- 
nation. This  was  found  objection- 
able in  a  work  so  distinctively  lyrical, 
and  it  was  afterwards  compressed  into 


three  acts  and  the  sufferings  of  true 
love  were  crowned  by  a  joyous  union. 

Miriam,  in  Whittier's  poem  of  that 
name  (1870),  a  Christian  girl  whose 
example  wins  from  her  Moslem  lord 
for  those  who  have  offended  him  that 
mercy  which  he  sees  to  be  in  all  creeds 
and  finds  so  little  practised  in  life. 

Miriam,  in  N.  Hawthorne's  ro- 
mance, The  Marble  Faun  (called 
Transformation  in  England),  a  beau- 
tiful art-student  in  Rome.  Her 
nationality  and  her  origin  are  pur- 
posely involved  in  mystery,  as  well  as 
her  relations  with  Brother  Antonio,  a 
model,  who  continually  dogs  her  foot- 
steps and  whose  evil  influence  she 
evidently  dreads.  At  last,  during  a 
moonlight  excursion  on  the  Capitoline 
Hill,  her  friend.  Count  Donatello, 
enraged  beyond  endurance,  and  en- 
couraged by  a  glance  from  Miriam, 
flings  him  over  the  Tarpeian  rock  to 
his  death.  From  that  moment 
Miriam  and  Donatello  become  linked 
together  by  their  guilty  secret,  and  the 
happy,  heedless,  faunlike  Italian  is 
changed  into  the  conscience-stricken 
sinner.  In  ^  the  end  he  surrenders 
himself  to  justice  and  Miriam  dis- 
appears. 

G.  P.  Lathrop  in  his  Study  of  Hawthorne 
finds  the  inspiration  for  the  character  of 
Miriam  in  the  profound  impression  made 
upon  the  author  by  Guido  Reni's  (alleged) 
portrait  of  Beatrice  Cenci.  This  necessarily 
implies  that  the  mysterious  model  was 
Miriam's  father  and  that  her  justification 
for  conniving  at  murder  was  the  same  as 
Beatrice's.  Julian  ^  Hawthorne  (Life  of 
Hawthorne,  vol.  ii,  p.  236)  mentions  a 
theory  which  originated  with  Dean  Stanley 
and  was  partly  sanctioned  by  Hawthorne 
himself,  viz.,  that  Miriam  was  suggested  by 
Mademoiselle  Deluzy,  whose  suspected  com- 

?licity  in  the  murder  of  the  Duchesse  de 
raslyn  had  stirred  up  French  society  in 
1847.  "Well,  I  dare  say  she  was,"  quoth 
Hawthorne,  when  the  subject  was  brought 
up  by  Henry  Bright,  "I  knew  I  had  some 
dim  recollection  of  some  crime,  but  I  didn't 
know  what,  but,"  he  added,  "the  story  isn't 
meant  to  be  explained;  it's  cloudland.'' 

Mirvan,  Captain,  in  Fanny  Bur- 
ney's  novel,  Eveline,  a  rough  seadog, 
*'  excellentlv  conceived,"  says  Austm 
Dobson,  but  only  partially  ex- 
hibited." Indeed,  Evelina  acknowl- 
edges that  she  cannot  report  his  con- 
versation verbatim  because  "almost 


Mirza 


270 


MokanoA 


every  other  word  he  utters  is  accom- 
panied by  an  oath  which  I  am  sure 
would  be  as  unpleasant  for  you  to 
read  as  for  me  to  write.  And  besides 
he  makes  use  of  a  thousand  sea  terms 
.which  are  to  me  quite  unintelligible." 

In  a  letter  (1780)  from  Bath  to  "  Daddy" 
Crisp,  Miss  Blimey  says  that  certain  naval 


officers  she  met  there  would  not  accept  Cap- 

/pe.     But  she  dc 
her  impenitence:    "The  more  I  see  of  sea- 


tain  Mirvan  as  a  type.     But  she  declares 


captains  the  less  reason  I  have  to  be  ashamed 
of  Captain  M . ,  f  or  they  have  all  so  irresistible 
a  propensity  to  wanton  mischief,  to  roasting 
beaux  and  detesting  old  women,  that  I  quite 
rejoice  I  showed  the  book  to  no  one  ere 
printed,  lest  I  should  have  been  prevailed 
upon  to  soften  his  character." 

Mirza,  in  Addison's  allegory,  The 
Vision  of  Mirza  (No.  159  of  the 
Spectator) ,  a  pious  Moslem  who,  falling 
asleep  on  the  fifth  day  of  the  moon, 
has  imfolded  to  him  a  panorama  of 
human  Hfe.  Time  is  symbolized  as  a 
prodigious  tide  of  water  rolling 
through  a  valley  with  an  impenetrable 
mist  at  each  end.  Over  it  stretched 
innumerable  bridges  of  life  over 
which  men  were  passing.  Some  fell 
prematurely  and  were  engulfed; 
others  reached  the  island  abodes  of 
the  blest. 

Mite,  Sir  Matthew,  in  Foote's 
comedy,  The  Nabob,  a  returned  East 
India  merchant,  purse-proud,  vulgar, 
dissolute,  hating  the  aristocracy  yet 
eager  to  be  numbered  among  them, 
turning  a  cold  shoulder  to  the  hum- 
ble friends  of  his  youth,  ostentatiously 
rewarding  his  panderers  and  flatterers, 
and  amazing  the  ignorant  by  his 
braggadocio  talk  of  lacs  and  rupees. 

Moby  Dick,  in  Herman  Melville's 
novel  of  that  name  (1850),  a  huge 
and  ferocious  whale,  so  styled  by  the 
whalers  of  New  Bedford  and  Nan- 
tucket in  the  mid-eighteenth  century. 
Captain  Ahab  of  the  whaler  Pequod 
loses  a  leg  in  his  first  unsuccessful 
encounter  with  the  monster.  He 
swears  revenge.  He  attains  it  in  a 
three  days'  battle  with  Moby  Dick, 
admirably  described,  which  ends  in 
the  death  of  the  whale,  but  not  until 
he  has  demolished  the  boats  and  sunk 
the  Pequod. 

Mock  Doctor,  hero  of  a  farce 
(1733)    by    Henry     Fielding,    para- 


phrased from  Le  Medecin  Malgre  Lui 
(1666),  of  Moli^re.  Sganarelle,  the 
faggot-maker,  is  here  c^ed  Gregory. 

Modish,  Lady  Betty,  in  Colley 
Gibber's  comedy.  The  Careless  Hus- 
band (1704),  a  fashionable  young 
woman  who  coquets  with  Lord  Fop- 
pington  merely  to  arouse  the  jealousy 
of  Lord  Morelove,  whom  she  really 
cares  for,  though  she  will  not  admit 
it  until  brought  to  terms  by  his 
retaliatory  flirtation  with  Lady 
Graveairs. 

Mogli  the  Frog,  in  Kipling's 
Jungle  Books  (i 894-1 895),  the  name 
given  by  Mother  Wolf  to  a  native 
baby,  named  Nathoo,  found  by  her  in 
a  forest.  The  man-cub  is  suckled 
along  with  her  litter  of  four  cubs  and 
brought  up  in  the  jungle.  He  learns 
jungle  law  and  jimgle  lore  from  Baloo 
the  Bear  and  Baghiera  the  Black 
Panther,  and  in  due  coiu"se  is  accepted 
as  one  of  the  Free  People  at  a  Pack 
Meeting,  despite  threats  and  protests 
from  Shere  Kan,  a  lame  tiger  who  had 
claimed  the  baby  as  its  victim.  Shere 
Kan  remains  his  sworn  enemy.  When 
Mogli  has  grown  to  boyhood  the 
tiger's  plot  against  his  life  is  foiled 
through  the  lad's  boldness  and  fertil- 
ity of  resource,  but  he  is  forced  to 
leave  the  Pack  and  seek  a  dwelling 
among  men.  While  acting  as  village 
herd  he  killed  his  old  enemy  Shere 
Kan.  He  married  the  daughter  of 
Abdul  Gafur,  who  gives  birth  to  a 
child  that  is  seen  playing  with  a  wolf. 

Mokanna,  the  "  Veiled  Prophet  of 
Korassan "  in  the  first  story  of 
Moore's  Lalla  Rookh  (18 17),  a  Mos- 
lem impostor,  Hakem  ben  Haschem, 
so  nicknamed  from  a  silver-gauze  veil 
worn  to  hide  his  face.  He  seduces 
Zelica  by  magic  arts;  her  lover  Azim 
in  revenge  joins  the  invading  army 
of  the  Caliph,  and  Mokanna,  despite 
all  his  valor  and  energy,  finding  his 
followers  reduced  to  a  mere  remnant, 
poisons  them  and  himself  plunges  into 
a  bath  of  corrosive  chemicals  which 
dissolve  all  the  elements  of  his  body. 
Zelica  assimies  the  fatal  veil,  and 
being  mistaken  for  Mokanna  rushes 
upon  the  spear  of  Azim  and  receives 
his    forgiveness    in    death.      Moore 


Monaco 


271 


Monsoon 


found  the  historical  original  of  his 
prophet  in  D'Herbelot's  Bihliothe 
que  Orientale  (1697). 

Monaco,  King  of,  in  Sardou's 
political  drama,  Rabagas  (1872),  a 
monarch  who  could  never  please  his 
people  nor  their  mouthpiece,  Rabagas. 
If  he  went  out  he  was  *'_given  to 
pleasure;"  if  he  remained  in  he  was 
given  to  idleness;  if  he  declared  war 
he  was  "  wasteful  of  the  public 
money;"  if  he  preserved  peace  he  was 
"  pusillanimous;"  if  he  ate  he  was 
"^-indulgent;"  if  he  abstained  he 
was  "  priest-ridden." 

Moneada,  Matthias  de,  in  Scott's 
novel,  The  Surgeon's  Daughter,  a 
merchant  stern  and  revengeful  who 
arrests  his  daughter  Zilla  the  day 
after  her  confinement  of  an  illegiti- 
mate son. 
k:  Monflathers,    Miss,    in  Dickens's 

\  novel,  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  xxxi 
(1840),  the  mistress  of  a  boarding 
and  day  school  who  is  greatly  shocked 
when  Little  Nell  on  Mrs.  Jarley's 
behalf  asks  her  to  patronize  the  wax- 
work show.  "  Don't  you  know,"  she 
asks,  "it  is  very  naughty  to  be  a 
wax  child  when  you  might  have  the 
proud  consciousness  of  assisting,  to 
the  extent  of  your  infant  powers, 
the  noble  maniifacturers  of  your 
country?  " 

Monimia,  titular  heroine  of  The 
Orphan  (1610),  a  tragedy  by  Thomas 
Otway.  The  ward  of  Lord  Acasto, 
she  is  in  love  with  Acasto's  son, 
Castallo,  who  marries  her  secretly. 
Another  son,  Polydore,  gains  admis- 
sion to  her  chamber  on  the  bridal 
night  by  passing  himself  ofiE  as  his 
brother.  Monimia  commits  suicide 
when  dawn  reveals  the  deception  and 
Polydore,  now  for  the  first  time  aware 
of  her  marriage,  provokes  a  quarrel 
with  Castallo  and  immolates  himself 
on  the  latter's  sword. 

The  nature  of  its  central  Incident  has 
kept  it  from  the  stage  for  the  last  eighty 
years,  but  from  the  time  that  Mrs.  Barry 
first  played  Monimia  the  character  has  been 
a  favorite  with  many  of  our  best  actresses, 
down  to  Miss  O'Neill  ...  A  victim  of 
love  ill  fated,  worthy  for  sadness  to  rank 
with  Penthea  in  The  Broken  Heart,  although 
she  is  altogether  more  lovable  and  life-like 
than  that  somewhat   shadowy  personage. 


Indeed  Otway  might  be  called  a  belated 
Ford,  with  tempered  horrors  and  mitigated 
gloom,  yet  with  fully  as  intense  a  sympathy 
for  ill-starred  love  and  the  sickness  of  a 
heart  broken  with  griefs. — Temple  Bar,  vol. 
118,  p.  378. 

Moniplies,  Richard,  in  Scott's  his- 
torical romance.  The  Fortunes  of 
Nigel,  the  honest,  obstinate  and  faith- 
ful Scotch  servant  of  Lord  Nigel 
Olifaunt. 

Monmouth,  Marquis  of,  in  Dis- 
raeli's novel,  Coningsby,  or  the  New 
Generation  (1844),  father  of  the  titular 
hero,  a  nobleman  of  vast  wealth, 
great  political  influence,  rare  sagacity, 
unbending  will,  intense  selfishness  and 
licentious  habits,  intended  as  a  por- 
trait of  that  famous  voluptuary,  the 
third  Marquis  of  Hertford  whom 
Thackeray  also  utilized  in  his  Lordi 
Steyne. 

Lord  Monmouth  Is  finely  conceived  and 
admirably  drawn,  and  is  a  far  more  interest- 
ing and  attractive  figure  than  either  hia 
original  or  Thackeray's  Lord  Steyne. 
Heartless,  self-indulgent  and  devoid  of 
scruple  as  he  is,  he  has  a  certain  grandeur 
of  his  own  as  the  type  of  a  Sulla-like  patri- 
cian, arrogant  but  dignified,  sublimely 
selfish,  but  also  self-sufficient,  and  alike  in 
good  and  evil  fortune  undaunted  in  hia 
bearing. — Moneypenny:  Life  of  Benjamin 
Disraeli. 

Monsoon,  Major,  in  Charles 
Lever's  novel  Charles  O'Malley  (1841), 
a  good-natured,  blustering,  military 
braggadocio  of  distinctly  Irish  char- 
acteristics— said  to  be  drawn  after 
the  O'Gorman  Mahone  (see  Mulli- 
gan, The).  Lever  used  to  feast  this 
gentleman  daily  at  his  table  while  the 
novel  was  in  course  of  construction. 
As  it  appeared  serially  in  the  Dublin 
University  Magazine,  the  Major  soon 
recognized  the  uses  to  which  he  was 
put,  but  Lever's  wine  was  so  good 
that  he  contented  himself  with  an 
occasional  growl  at  his  host  when  the 
touches  in  the  portrait  seemed  a  little 
too  free. 

Modem  English  literature  has  not  pro- 
duced a  more  Shakespearean — I  might  say 
a  more  original — comic  character  .  .  . 
But  Major  Monsoon  is  well  known  to  be 
a  minutely  accurate  portrait  of  the  charac- 
ter,— a  faithful  chronicle  of  the  sayings  and 
doings  of  a  real  living  personage. — G.  P. 
Marsh:  English  Language  and  Literature^ 
p.  567. 


Montargis 


272 


Moray 


Montargis,  Dog  of.  The  animal 
hero  of  a  melodrama  by  Guilbert  de 
Pix^r^court,  La  Foret  de  Bondi  on  le 
Chien  de  Montargis  (1814),  which 
dramatized  a  historical  fact.  During 
the  reign  of  the  French  Charles  V, 
Aubrey  de  Montdidier  was  murdered 
in  the  forest  of  Bondi  near  Paris. 
Vainly  did  his  faithful  hound  seek  to 
protect  him.  The  dog  was  successful, 
however,  in  revealing  the  murderer. 
He  flew  at  the  Chevalier  Richard  de 
Macaire  whenever  he  saw  him  in  the 
streets  of  Paris.  Suspicion  was 
aroused.  Macaire  was  known  to 
have  been  an  enemy  of  Montdidier. 
Charles  V  ordered  chevalier  and  dog 
into  his  presence.  He  decided  the 
matter  could  be  settled  only  by  the 
ordeal  of  battle.  The  chevalier  was 
to  be  armed  with  a  club,  the  dog  was 
to  have  an  empty  cask  to  retire  to. 
The  singular  combat,  fought  on 
October  8,  1371,  lasted  so  long  that 
the  man  fainted  from  fatigue.  On 
coming  to  he  confessed  the  crime. 
A  bas  relief  picturing  this  event  was 
sculptured  in  the  great  hall  of  the 
now  ruined  castle  of  Montargis. 
Hence  the  name  given  to  the  dog. 
It  had  no  other  connection  with  the 
Montargis  family. 

Monte  Christo,  Count  of.  See 
Dantes,  Edmond. 

Montesinos,  in  the  Charlemagne 
cycle  of  legends,  a  paladin  who  for 
some  fancied  slight  retired  from  the 
French  court  to  La  Mancha  and  took 
up  his  abode  in  a  cavern  some  60  feet 
deep  which  is  still  known  as  the  Cave 
of  Montesinos.  Cervantes  makes 
Don  Quixote  (II,  ii,  5)  penetrate  half- 
way into  this  aperture,  when  he  falls 
asleep  and  is  visited  by  strange  visions 
wherein  his  own  Dulcinea  is  en- 
chanted into  the  appearance  of  a 
coimtry  wench  and  members  of  the 
court  of  Charlemagne  are  befooled  by 
Merlin. 

Montgomery,  Ellen,  heroine  of  a 
novel.  The  Wide  Wide  World  (1851), 
by  Susan  Warner  ("  Elizabeth  Weth- 
erill  "),  which  once  enjoyed  extraor- 
dinary popularity.  Ellen's  parents 
going  to  Europe  place  the  child  un- 
der the  tutelage  of  a  narrow-minded, 


sharp-tempered  relative  of  her  fa- 
ther's. Miss  Fortune  Emerson;  she  is 
rescued  from  the  blight  of  Puritanism 
by  a  kind  friend,  Alice  Humphrey. 

Moor,  Karl,  hero  of  Schiller's  first 
play  The  Robbers  (1781),  a  high-spir- 
ited and  naturally  noble  youth,  of 
good  family,  who  turns  bandit  and, 
with  a  gang  of  kindred  spirits,  wages 
war  against  society,  because  it  toler- 
ates and  even  sanctions  the  polished 
villainy  of  a  brother  who  has  cruelly 
wronged  him.  Incidentally  the  play 
was  a  protest  against  all  outworn  con- 
ventions and  artificial  restraints  of 
mind  and  soul.  In  Germany  it  cre- 
ated a  sensation  only  second  to  that 
of  its  less  violent  precursor,  Goethe's 
Werther,  and  its  influence  extended  all 
over  Europe. 

Moray,  Captain  Robert,  in  Gilbert 
Parker's  historical  romance,  The 
Seats  of  the  Mighty  (1896),  an  officer 
in  Lord  Amherst's  regiment  held  on 
parole  as  a  hostage  in  Quebec,  at  the 
critical  period  of  the  war  between 
the  French  and  English.  Imprisoned 
on  a  false  charge  of  being  a  spy  he  is 
saved  from  execution  by  Doltaire 
(g.v.),  who  attempts  to  secure  certain 
papers  from  him  and  who  being  his 
rival  in  love  wishes  Moray  to  survive 
and  witness  his  own  triumph.  He 
escapes,  however,  brings  valuable 
information  to  the  besiegers  under 
Wolfe  and  after  the  capture  of  Quebec 
recovers  the  lady  (Alixe  Duvamey) 
whom  he  had  secretly  married  on  the 
eve  of  his  escape.  Moray  is  avowedly 
drawn  from  a  little  known  historical 
personage,  author  of  an  autobiograph- 
ical work,  Memoirs  of  Major  Robert 
Stobo, 

The  narrative  was  written  in  a  very 
ornate  and  grandiloquent  style,  but  the  hero 
of  the  memoirs  was  so  evidently  a  man  of 
remarkable  character,  enterprise  and  ad- 
venture that  I  saw  in  the  few  scattered 
bones  of  the  story  which  he  unfolded  the 
skeleton  of  an  ample  historical  romance. 
There  was  necessary  to  offset  this  buoyant 
and  courageous  Scotsman,  adventurous  and 
experienced,  a  character  of  the  race  which 
captured  him  and  held  him  in  leash  till  just 
before  the  taking  of  Quebec.  I  therefore 
found  in  the  character  of  Doltaire — which 
was  the  character  of  Voltaire  spelled  with 
a  big  D — purely  a  creature  of  the  imagina- 
tion, one  who,  as  the  son  of  a  peasant  woman 


More 


273 


Mosby 


and  Louis  XV,  should  be  an  eflfective  offset 
to  Major  Stobo.  There  was  no  hint  of 
Doltaire  in  the  "Memoirs."  There  could 
not  be,  nor  of  the  plot  on  which  the  story 
was  based,  because  it  was  all  imagination. 
Likewise,  there  was  no  mention  of  Alixe 
Duvainey  in  the  "Memoirs,"  nor  of  Bigot 
and  Mme.  Cournal  and  all  the  others.  They 
too,  when  not  characters  of  the  imagination, 
were  lifted  out  of  the  history  of  the  time. — 
Sir  Gilbert  Parker:  Introduction  to 
Novels. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  the  famous 
Lord  Chancellor  of  England  (1478- 
1535),  figures  in  Shakespeare's  his- 
torical drama  Henry  VIII  (iv,  i;  v, 
3) ,  but  only  under  his  official  title  as 
Lord  Chancellor.  In  v,  3,  he  sen- 
tences Thomas  CromweU  to  the 
Tower.  A  full  length  sketch  of 
More  is  presented  by  Anne  Manning 
in  her  historical  romance  The  House- 
hold of  Sir  Thomas  More  (1869). 
This  purports  to  be  a  diary  kept  by 
his  daughter  Margaret  who  married 
Roper.  The  story  begins  with  More 
as  a  private  gentleman,  a  great  lawyer 
and  a  friend  of  Erasmus,  then  shows 
him  as  first  favorite  in  the  court  of 
Henry  VIII  and  ends  with  his  down- 
fall and  death  on  the  scaffold. 

Morella,  in  Edgar  Allan  Poe's 
story  of  that  name,  a  wife  who  had 
pried  deeply  into  mystical  writings 
on  personal  identity  until  the  subject 
held  a  kind  of  unholy  fascination  for 
both  herself  and  her  husband.  Dying, 
she  bears  a  daughter  into  whom  it 
soon  becomes  evident  that  the  per- 
sonal soul  of  the  mother  had  entered. 

Morgan,  James,  in  Thackeray's 
novel,  Pendennis,  the  valet  of  Major 
Pendennis,  anticipating  all  his  wants, 
supplying  him  with  backstairs  gossip 
about  fashionable  folk  and  generally 
a  model  of  discreetness  until  his  head 
is  turned  by  continued  prosperity 
and  he  seeks  to  blackmail  his  em- 
ployer through  his  knowledge  of 
Colonel  Altamont's  secret.  ^  The 
Major  neatly  checkmates  him  in  an 
interview  which  Morgan  begins  as  a 
lion  and  ends  as  a  lamb. 

Morland,  Harry,  hero  of  Henry 
Brookes's  novel,  The  Fool  of  Quality 
(1760),  is  the  second  son  of  the  Earl 
of  Morland  and  is  nicknamed  "  fool  " 
by  his  parents  because  he  appears  to 
18 


sad  disadvantage  beside  his  brilliant 
elder  brother.  Eventually  he  proves 
that  he  was  only  an  ugly  duckling 
who  in  his  swanhood  ecUpses  all  his 
family.  Charles  Kingsley,  perhaps 
because  the  hero  foreshadowed  the 
Muscular  Christianity  of  which 
Kingsley  was  a  prophet,  brought  out 
a  new  edition  of  the  novel  in  1873, 
with  an  eulogistic  introduction. 

Morose,  in  Ben  Jongon's  Epicene, 
a  lover  of  quiet,  exquisitely  impatient 
of  rude  sounds  and  loquacity,  who 
lived  in  a  retired  street,  and  barri- 
caded his  doors  with  mattresses  to 
prevent  disturbance  to  his  ears. 

Morris,  Dinah,  the  real  heroine  of 
George  EHot's  Adam  Bede  (1859),  a 
publicly  recognized  Wesleyan  field- 
preacher  "acting  under  directions." 
In  private  life  she  works  in  a  cotton- 
mill.  With  the  enthusiasm  of  a  fair, 
gentle  and  unselfish  spirit,  and  an  in- 
born delicacy  that  saves  her  from  any 
errors  of  tact  or  taste,  she  becomes  a 
ministering  angel  in  her  simple  way 
to  the  rude  and  ignorant  among  whom 
her  lot  is  cast.  Dinah  was  copied 
from  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Evans,  the  au- 
thor's aunt,  who  had  been  a  female 
preacher  at  Wirksworth  in  Derbyshire. 
One  Sunday  afternoon  Mrs.  Evans 
happened  casually  to  mention  that  in 
her  youth  she  had,  with  another  pious 
woman,  visited  an  unhappy  girl  in 
prison,  stayed  with  her  all  night, 
and  gone  with  her  to  execution. 
"  This  incident,"  adds  George  Eliot, 
*'  lay  on  my  mind  for  years  on  years, 
as  a  dead  germ  apparently,  till  time 
had  made  my  mind  a  nidus  in  which 
i  t  could  fructify.  It  then  turned  out 
to  be  the  germ  of  Adam  Bede.'' 

Mosby,  the  villain  of  the  anony- 
mous drama,  Arden  of  Fever  sham 
(1592),  which  has  sometimes  been 
attributed  to  Shakespeare.  Having 
seduced  Arden's  wife  he  is  baffled  in 
repeated  attempts  to  murder  him 
but  finally  hires  two  ruffians  to  do 
the  deed.  They  rush  in  at  a  given 
signal  when  Mosby  and  Arden  are 
seated  playing  a  game  of  draughts. 
The  whole  gang  are  apprehended  and 
executed  in  strict  accordance  with 
the  facts  of  the  case;  the  story  bemg 


Moth 


274 


Munchausen 


true.  In  1739  the  old  play  was  re- 
vised and  rewritten  by  George  Lillo. 

Moth,  in  Shakespeare's  Love's 
Labor's  Lost,  page  to  Don  Adriano,  a 
saucy  and  playiul  youngster. 

Mou-Mou,  hero  of  a  story  of  that 
name  by  Tourgenief,  a  deaf  mute,  a 
serf,  who  has  led  an  unhappy,  lonely 
life,  whose  only  friend  is  a  little  dog. 
His  mistress,  who  has  absolute  power 
over  her  slaves,  a  nervous,  fretful 
woman,  fancies  herself  kept  awake 
by  the  dog's  barking,  and  gives  orders 
that  it  be  put  to  death.  The  serf  is 
himself  its  executioner;  he  washes  the 
dog,  gives  it  a  good  meal,  takes  it  out 
with  him  upon  the  river,  throws  it 
overboard,  and  rows  hastily  away. 

Mowcher,  Miss,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield,ha.ir  dresser  and  masseuse, 
— "  a  fussy  dwarf  of  about  forty  or 
forty-five,  with  a  very  large  head  and 
face,  a  pair  of  roguish  grey  eyes,  and 
such  extremely  little  arms  that  to 
enable  her  to  lay  a  finger  archly 
against  her  snub  nose,  as  she  ogled 
Steerforth,  she  was  obliged  to  meet 
the  finger  half-way  and  lay  her  nose 
against  it."  Kindly  cheery  and  well 
intentioned  despite  her  vulgarity — 
her  favorite  expression  is  "  ain't  I 
volatile?  " 

Mudjekeewis,  in  Longfellow's 
Hiawatha,  the  father  of  the  tittdar 
hero. 

Muller,  Maud,  heroine  and  title  of 
a  ballad  by  J.  G.  Whittier.  Maud,  a 
shy  and  pretty  maiden,  stops  in  her 
haymaking  to  help  the  judge  to  a  cup 
of  water.  He  drives  away  and  never 
sees  her  again.  But  each  has  been 
strangely  moved.  A  little  more  for- 
wardness on  the  part  of  either  might 
have  changed  the  destiny  of  both. 
Such  is  the  evident  moral  of  the 
closing  couplet: 

Of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen 

The  saddest  are  these  "It  might  have  been." 

Bret  Harte's  clever  parody,  Mrs. 
Judge  Jenkins,  assumes  that  the 
judge  did  marry  the  maid  and  sums 
up  the  result  of  the  mesaUiance  as 
follows: 

There  are  no  sadder  words  of  tongue  or  pen 
Than  "It  is,  but  It  hadn't  orter  been." 


Mulligan,  of  Ballymulligan,  The, 

in  Thackeray's  Christmas  book,  Mrs. 
Perkins's  Ball,  a  fire-eating  Irishman, 
self-described  as  a  descendant  from 
the  Irish  kings,  who  forces  Titmarsh 
to  take  him  to  the  ball  where  he 
frightens  his  partner  by  making  her 
dance  a  double  shufile  jig,  and  ex- 
changes high  words  with  Mr.  Perkins 
over  the  wine.  He  is  a  composite  of 
WiUiam  John  O'Connell,  brother  of 
the  Liberator,  facetiously  called  Lord 
Kilmallock  from  his  native  town,  and 
Charles  James  Patrick  Mahone,  who 
chose  to  style  himself  the  O'Gorman 
Mahone. 

Mulvaney,  Terence,  hero  of  many 
of  Rudyard  Kipling's  best  stories. 
With  his  friends  and  fellow  soldiers, 
the  cockney  Stanley  Ortheris  and  the 
Yorkshire  John  Learoyd,  he  made  his 
first  appearance  in  The^  Three  Muske- 
teers, a  tale  bound  up  in  Tales  of  the 
Hills,  first  pubUshed  in  Calcutta  in 
1888.  Here  is  the  opening  sentence: 
**  Mulvaney,  Ortheris  and  Learoyd 
are  privates  in  B  Company  of  a 
Line  Regiment  and  personal  friends 
of  mine.  Collectively,  I  think,  but 
am  not  certain,  they  are  the  worst 
men  in  the  regiment  so  far  as  genial 
blackguardism  goes." 

Mulvaney,  the  Irish  giant,  who  has  been 
the  "grizzled,  tender,  and  very  wise  Ulys- 
ses" to  successive  generations  of  young  and 
foolish  recruits,  is  a  great  creation.  He  is 
the  father  of  the  craft  of  arms  to  his  asso- 
ciates; he  has  served  with  various  regiments 
from  Bermuda  to  Halifax;  he  is  "old  in  war, 
scarred,  reckless,  resourceful,  and  in  his 
pious  hours  an  unequaled  soldier."  Learoyd, 
the  second  of  these  friends,  is  "six  and  a 
half  feet  of  slow-moving,  heavy-footed 
Yorkshireman,  born  on  the  wolds,  bred  in 
the  dales,  and  educated  chiefly  among  the 
carriers'  carts  at  the  back  of  York  railway- 
station."  The  third  is  Ortheris,  a  little  man 
as  sharp  as  a  needle,  "a  fox-terrier  of  a 
cockney,"  an  inveterate  poacher  and  dog- 
stealer. — E.  W.  Gosse:    The  Century. 

Munchausen,  Baron,  titular  hero 
of  a  burlesque  book  of  travels,  the 
first  edition  of  which,  a  pamphlet  of 
48  pages,  was  published  in  London 
and  in  the  English  language  under 
the  title  Baron  Munchausen's  Narra- 
tive of  his  Marvellous  Travels  and 
Campaigns  in  Russia.  Rewritten 
and  finally  enlarged  to  its  present  pro- 


Murdstone 


275 


Myrrha 


portions  the  book  ran  through  five 
editions  before  1787,  when  it  was 
introduced  to  the  German  public  in  a 
preface  by  G.  A.  Burger,  the  poet, 
who  not  unnaturally  passed  in  Ger- 
many for  its  author.  Not  until  1824 
was  the  authorship  definitely  fixed 
upon  Rudolf  Eric  Raspe  (i  737-1 794) 
by  a  communication  from  Karl  von 
Reinhard. 

Raspe,  however,  was  more  com- 
piler than  author.  From  Bebel's 
Facetics,  Lange's  Mendacia  Ridicula, 
Castiglione's  Cortegiano  and  other 
sources  he  borrowed  the  stories  he 
attributed  to  Baron  Munchausen. 
In  the  preface  to  the  first  edition  he 
thus  identified  his  hero:  "  Baron 
Munchausen,  of  Bodenwerder,  near 
Hameln,  on  the  Weser,  belongs  to  the 
noble  farnily  of  that  name,  wluch  gave 
to  the  King's  German  dominions  the 
late  Prime  Minister  and  several  other 
public  characters  equally  illustrious. 
He  is  a  man  of  great  original  humor." 

Murdstone,  Edward,  in  Dickens's 
David  Copperfield,  the  hero's  cruel 
stepfather  who  broke  the  heart  of  the 
widow  Copperfield  in  the  attempt  to 
be  "  firm  "  with  her.  His  sister  Jane 
is  as  gloomy  and  obstinate  as  himself. 

Musketeers,  The  Three  (Fr.  Les 
Trots  Mousguetaires) ,  in  Dtunas's 
ropance  of  that  name  (1844),  a 
military  trinity,  made  up  of  Arthos, 
Aramis  and  Porthos  (see  these  sepa- 
rate names)  which  the  advent  of 
D'Artagnan  changes  into  a  quartette. 

Musketeer  may  be  translated  into 
less  literal  but  more  idiomatic  English 
as  Guardsman.  Hence,  in  Trilby y 
Du  Maurier  borrows  and  amplifies  the 
name  into  "  The  Three  Guardsmen  of 
the  Pen,"  applying  it  to  an  amiable 
trio  of  bohemian  artists  in  Paris :  Little 
BiUee,  a  Londoner  (William  Bagot) ; 
"The  Laird,"  a  Scotchman,  and 
"  Taffy,"  a  Yorkshireman. 

A  reminiscence  of  Dumas's  trio  may 
also  have  suggested  to  Kipling  his 
Soldiers  Three  (see  Mulvaney).  In 
French  a  Mousquetaire  might  be  any 
soldier  armed  with  a  musket,  but 
the  word  was  applied  specifically  to 
a  company  of  gentlemen  who  formed 
a  mounted  guard  to  the  King  of 


France  from  i66i  to  1791,  when  they 
were  suppressed.  They  were  clad  in 
scarlet,  hence  their  quarters  were 
known  as  the  Maison  Rouge.  In 
peace  they  followed  the  king  as  pro- 
tectors in  the  chase;  in  war  they 
fought  either  afoot  or  on  horseback. 

Mylrea,  Daniel,  in  Hall  Caine's 
novel,  The  Deemster  (1887),  son  of  the 
bishop  of  the  Isle  of  Man  and  nephew 
of  the  Deemster  Thorkell  Mylrea.  A 
richly  endowed  nature  suddenly 
arrested  in  a  prodigal  and  unworthy 
career  by  a  great  tragedy.  He  kills 
his  own  cousin  in  a  duel  forced  upon 
him  and  is  sentenced  to  be  cut  off  for- 
ever from  his  own  people.  None  may 
look  upon  him  or  speak  to  him  or  give 
him  aid.  A  pestilence  breaks  out; 
Daniel  wins  a  new  place  in  public 
esteem  by  his  courage  and  devotion. 

Myriel,  Monseigneur  Bienvenu, 
Bishop  of  D.,  in  Victor  Hugo's  Les 
Miser ables,  Part  I  (1862),  an  ideal  of 
exalted  charity,  united  to  a  chastened 
sprightliness  and  absolute  mental 
serenity.  When  raised  to  the  epis- 
copate his  first  act  was  to  turn  his 
palace  into  a  hospital  and  take  the 
hospital  for  his  episcopal  residence. 
He  reserves  for  himself  only  one 
fifteenth  of  his  salary,  the  rest  goes 
to  the  poor.  He  visits  his  diocese  on 
foot  or^  riding^  a  horse  or  a  donkey. 
His  mission  is  to  assuage  human 
suffering.  He  passes  his  days  in 
study,  prayer  and  the  consolation  of 
the  afflicted — a  short  interval  only 
being  snatched  for  the  frugal  meal,  a 
veritable  dish  of  herbs.  See  Val- 
JEAN,  Jean. 

Myrrha,  in  Byron's  historical  trag- 
edy, Sardanapalus  (1819),  an  Ionian 
slave,  the  best-loved  of  the  monarch's 
concubines — beautiful,  heroic,  loving 
and  devoted — ashamed  of  her  en- 
forced degradation,  half  ashamed  even 
of  loving  a  barbarian  but  using  all  her 
influence  over  him  to  ennoble  as  well 
as  to  lighten  his  existence.  She  rouses 
him  to  action  against  the  conspiracy 
of  Arbaces,  and  when  all  is  lost,  in- 
duces him  to  mount  a  funeral  pyre 
which  she  fires  with  her  own  hand, 
then  leaps  into  the  flames  to  share 
his  death. 


Nadgett 


276 


Nauhaught 


N 


Nadgett,  in  Dickens's  Martin  Chuz- 
zlewit  (1844),  a  sort  of  non-profes- 
sional private  detective  employed  by 
Montague  Tigg  as  manager  of  the 
fraudulent  Anglo-Bengalee  Company. 

Nana,  heroine  and  title  of  a  novel 
by  Emile  Zola  which  takes  up  the 
fortunes  of  the  daughter  of  Gervaise 
Macquart,  heroine  of  LAssomoir.  In 
this  first  novel  she  is  a  little  girl  pre- 
cociously familiar  with  evil  courses, 
now  she  is  full  fledged  and  a  fair 
representative  of  the  Parisian  courte- 
san of  the  Second  Empire.  The 
volume  opens  with  an  account  of  her 
appearance  on  the  stage,  in  one  of  the 
burlesques  that  were  common  at 
that  time,  when  OfiEenbach  was  looked 
upon  as  a  great  musical  composer. 
She  cannot  sing  a  note;  she  knows 
nothing  of  acting,  but  her  beauty  wins 
the  day,  and  she  is  at  once  successful. 
Men  of  fashion  go  crazy  over  her,  and 
so  launch  her  upon  a  career  of  squalid 
splendor  that  ends  in  disaster. 

Nancanou,  Mrs.  Aurora,  and  her 
daughter  Clothilde,  the  two  heroines, 
equal  in  charm  and  not  greatly  dis- 
parate in  age,  of  George  W.  Cable's 
novel  of  Creole  life  in  New  Orleans, 
The  Grandissimes. 

No  dearer  or  delightfuller  figures  have 
been  presented  by  the  observer  of  an  alien 
race  and  religion  ...  In  this  mother 
and  daughter  the  parental  and  filial  rela- 
tions are  inverted  with  courageous  fidelity 
to  life,  where  we  as  often  see  a  judicious 
daughter  holding  an  impulsive  mother  in 
check  as  the  reverse.  Clothilde  is  always 
shocked  and  troubled  by  her  mother's 
wilful  rashness,  and  Aurora,  who  is  not  so 
very  much  her  senior,  is  always  breaking 
bonds  with  a  girlish  impetuosity,  which  is 
only  aggravated  by  the  attempt  to  restrain 
it. — W.  D.  HowELLS:  Heroines  of  Fiction, 
vol.  II,  p.  236. 

Narcissa,  in  Pope's  Moral  Essays 
(1731)1  the  sub j  ect  of  the  famous  lines  : 
"Odious!      In    woolen?     Twould    a    saint 

provoke!" 
Were   the   last  words   that   poor   Narcissa 

spoke. 
"No,  let  a  charming  chintz  and  Brussels 

lace 
Wrap  my  cold  limbs  and  shade  my  lifeless 

face; 
One  would  not,  sure,  be  frightful  when  one's 

dead! 
And,  Betty,  give  this  cheek  a  little  red!" 

Essay,  i,  1.  246. 


Pope  here  alludes  to  the  current 
story  that  Nance  Oldiield,  the  famous 
actress  (i 683-1 730),  was  buried  by 
her  own  orders  in  a  "  very  fine  Brus- 
sels lace  headdress,  a  new  pair  of 
kid  gloves,  and  a  robe  with  lace  ruffles 
and  a  lace  collar."  The  place  of 
interment  was  Westminster  Abbey; 
for  two  days  previous  the  body  lay 
in  state  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber, 
watched  over  by  two  noblemen. 

Narcisse,  in  G.  W.  Cable's  novel, 
Dr.  Sevier  (1883),  an  amiable  light- 
minded  Creole  with  infinite  confidence 
in  himself  and  in  the  future.  He  asks 
to  be  called  Papillon  or  Butterfly 
"  'Cause,"  says  he,  "thass  my  natu'e. 
I  gatheth  honey  eve'y  day  ftun  eve'y 
opening  floweh,  as  the  baod  of  Avon 
wemawked." 

Nathan,  hero  of  G.  E.  Lessing's 
drama,  Nathan  the  Wise  (1779),  a  Jew 
trader  in  Jerusalem  at  the  time  of  the 
Crusades,  a  broad-minded  philoso- 
pher who,  though  a  Jew  by  race  and 
nominally  by  reUgion,  has  risen  above 
the  trammels  of  that  most  exclusive 
sect  and  has  learned  to  look  upon  all 
religions  as  different  forms  of  the  one 
great  central  Truth  which  no  human 
intellect  can  grasp  in  its  entirety.  In 
the  crucial  scene  of  the  book  he  ex- 
plains his  position  to  Saladin  by  the 
apologue  of  the  three  indistinguish- 
able rings  given  to  his  three  sons  by  an 
impartial  father  who  could  not  bear  to 
set  one  above  the  other.  In  the  end 
it  turns  out  that  Nathan's  adopted 
daughter  Recha  and  a  young  Templar 
who  loves  her  are  brother  and  sister 
and  the  children  of  Saladin's  brother 
by  a  Christian  wife.  Jew,  Christian 
and  Mussulman,  therefore,  are  united 
into  one  family,  knit  together  by  ties 
of  blood  and  mutual  good  offices. 

Nathaniel,  Sir,  in  Shakespeare's 
Love's  Labor's  Lost,  the  curate  of 
Holofomes,  described  as  "  a  foolish 
mild  man,  an  honest  man  look  you 
and  soon  dashed." 

Nauhaught,  subject  of  a  poem, 
Nauhaught  the  Deacon,  by  J.  G.  Whit- 
tier.  A  baptized  Indian,  poor  and  on 
the  verge  of  starvation,  he  dreams 


Naulalika 


277 


Newcome 


one  night  that  an  angel  presents  him 
with  a  gold  piece.  Next  morning  he 
finds  a  purse  of  gold.  After  a  hard 
battle  with  his  savage  instincts,  he 
restores  it  to  the  owner,  who  hands 
him  a  gold  piece  from  its  contents. 
Thus  the  dream  is  fulfilled. 

Naulalika,  in  the  novel  of  that 
name  (1892)  by  Rudyard  Kipling 
and  Walter  Balestier,  is  a  priceless 
necklace  that  Nicholas  Tarvin,  a 
hustling  American  from  the  Western 
states,  secures  after  many  terrific 
adventures  in  India — thereby  win- 
ning the  hand  of  Kate  Sheriff.  Nau- 
lahka  means  the  nine-lakher,  "  the 
thing  worth  nine  lahks  of  rupees  "= 
;^90,ooo,  or  $450,000. 

Nell,  Little,  in  Dickens's  Old  Curi- 
osity Shop.    See  Trent,  Nelly. 

Nerissa,  in  Shakespeare's  The 
Merchant  of  Venice,  a  bright,  pert, 
waiting  maid  to  Portia  whom  she 
imitates.  She  is  close  kin  to  Lucetta 
in  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona. 

Nestor,  in  Greek  myth  the  oldest 
and  most  experienced  of  all  the  chiefs 
gathered  before  Troy.  Homer  credits 
him  with  great  powers  of  persuasion, 
Shakespeare  introduces  him  into  Troi- 
lus  and  Cressida.  In  Act  i,  Sc.  3, 
Ulysses  describes  how  Patroclus  mim- 
ics Nestor  and  his  infirmities  in  order 
to  make  sport  for  Achilles. 

Netiha,  heroine  of  Byron's  narra- 
tive poem  The  Island.  A  native  of 
Toobouiai,  one  of  the  Society  Islands 
whereon  the  mutineers  from  the 
Bounty  had  landed,  she  gave  her 
hand  in  marriage  to  a  mutineer  named 
Torquil.  When  a  British  vessel  was 
sent  out  to  capture  the  outlaws, 
Neuha  withdrew  with  her  husband 
into  a  cave  of  which  she  knew  the 
secret  and  they  remained  there  imtil 
all  danger  was  past. 

Neville,  Miss,  in  Goldsmith's  com- 
edy. She  Stoops  to  Conquer  (1773),  a 
friend  and  confidante  of  Miss  Hard- 
castle,  lively,  coquettish  and  hand- 
some. Mrs.  Hardcastle  has  destined 
her  for  her  son  Tony  Ltmipkin,  but 
neither  cares  for  the  match  and  when 
Miss  Neville  falls  in  love  with  Hast- 
ings Tony  eagerly  helps  the  latter  to 
outwit  Mrs.  Hardcastle. 


Newcome,  Barnes,  in  Thackeray's 
The  Newcomes,  eldest  son  of  Sir 
Brian  and  Lady  Ann,  a  cold-blooded, 
cowardly,  mean-spirited,  selfish  man 
of  the  world,  a  tou6  in  secret,  a  moral- 
ist by  public  profession,  clever  in 
speech,  in  politics  and  business,  ruling 
all  his  family  except  his  sister  Ethel, 
who  recognizes  that  he  is  a  sham,  and 
tyrannizing  over  his  wife  (Lady  Clara 
Pulleyn)  until  she  elopes  with  Jack 
Belsize  (Lord  Highgate). 

Newcome,  Clive,  in  Thackeray's 
novel,  The  Newcomes,  Colonel  New- 
come's  only  son,  an  artist,  frank, 
generous,  open-hearted,  in  love  with 
his  cousin  Ethel  Newcome,  whom  he 
marries  after  the  death  of  his  first 
wife,  Rosa  Mackenzie,  has  freed  him 
from  a  disastrous  mesalliance. 

Newcome,  Ethel,  in  Thackeray's 
Newcomes,  eldest  daughter  of  Sir 
Brian  and  Lady  Ann,  a  brilliant, 
beautiful,  high-spirited  girl.  Loving 
truth  and  scorning  sham,  she  is  a 
little  too  quick  in  detecting  affecta- 
tion or  insincerity  in  others,  too  im- 
patient of  dulness  or  pomposity. 
"  Truth  looks  out  of  her  bright  eyes 
and  rises  up  armed  and  flashes  scorn 
or  denial,  perhaps  too  readily  when 
she  encounters  flattery  or  meanness 
or  imposture.  After  her  first  appear- 
ance in  the  world,  if  the  truth  must 
be  told,  this  young  woman  was  pop- 
ular neither  with  many  men  nor  with 
most  women "  (Chap.  xxiv).  But 
none  could  fail  to  pay  tribute  to  her 
beauty.  Even  the  famous  Diana  in 
the  Louvre  to  which  Clive  compared 
her  was  not  more  perfect  in  form  or 
face. 

Thackeray  wrote  The  Newcomes  after  his 
visit  to  the  United  States  in  1852.  Mrs. 
Julia  Ward  Howe  in  her  Reminiscences 
opines  that  two  young  women  whom  he  met 
in  New  York  gave  him  hints  for  his  very 
un-English  Ethel.  Mrs.  Hampton,  sister- 
in-law  of  General  Wade  Hampton,  was  one: 
"She  told  me  that  she  recognized  bits  of 
her  own  conversation  in  some  of  the  sayings 
of  Ethel  Newcome."  The  other  is  men- 
tioned later  in  the  same  book:  "I  have  little 
doubt  that  in  depicting  the  beautiful  and 
noble  though  wayward  girl  Thackeray  had 
in  mind  something  of  the  aspect  and  charac- 
ter of  the  lovely  Sally  Baxter."  General 
James  Grant  Wilson  quotes  from  a  letter  he 
received  from  Sally's  surviving  sister  in 
1900.    Thackeray,  she  says,  used  to  call  her 


Newcome 


278 


Nickleby 


mother  Lady  Castlewood  and  her  sister 
Miss  Beatrix.  "It  is  not  true,"  she  adds, 
"as  has  been  often  said,  that  the  character 
of  Ethel  Newcome  was  drawn  from  my 
sister,  although  some  of  the  scenes  in  The 
Newcomes  were  no  doubt  suggested  by  seeing 
my  sister  holding  her  court  in  New  York 
ball-rooms." 

Newcome,   Colonel   Thomas,   the 

chief  character  in  Thackeray's  novel 
The  Newcomes  and  one  of  the  greatest 
figures  in  fiction,  claiming  kinship 
with  Thackeray's  own  favorites  Don 
Quixote,  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley, 
Uncle  Toby  and  Natty  Bumppo,  all 
of  whom  he  half  laughingly  acknowl- 
edged were  in  his  mind  as  he  wrote. 
The  Colonel  is  simple,  unworldly, 
pure  minded,  humble,  God-fearing,  a 
gentleman  in  externals  and  in  all  his 
instincts,  generous  up  to  the  limit 
of  his  means,  and  obsessed  by  a 
punctilious  sense  of  honor  that  proves 
his  own  undoing.  The  "  Adstmi!  " 
which  he  utters  on  his  death  bed 
in  the  Grejrfriars  (chap.  Ixxx),  sin- 
gularly is  reminiscent  of  the  "  Here!  " 
of  another  famous  death  scene, 
that  of  Natty  Bumppo  in  Cooper's 
The  Prairie.  Lady  Anna  Thack- 
eray Ritchie  in  raising  a  monu- 
ment to  Thackeray's  stepfather,  Ma- 
jor Carmichael  Smith,  has  placed 
the  ejaculation  "  Adsum!  "  over  the 
epitaph,  thus  showing  that  the  fam- 
ily realizes  the  Major  was  in  some 
respects  the  prototype  of  Colonel 
Newcome. 

Newman,  Christopher,'^  in  Henry 
James's  novel  of  The  A  merican  (1877), 
is  a  self-made  American.  He  has 
gathered  a  great  fortune  before  the 
age  of  35,  has  gone  to  Paris  to  spend 
it,  and  naively  resolves  to  take  him 
a  wife  out  of  the  Faubourg  St.  Ger- 
main. He  gains  the  entree  to  that 
difficult  stronghold  and  very  nearly 
succeeds  in  his  project.  But  alas! 
"  The  Old  World  crushes  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  New.  It  erects  before 
him  a  cruel  incomprehensible  barrier 
and  sucks  the  soul  out  of  him  and 
remorselessly  cuts  off  all  his  hopes. 
He  is  no  match  for  it,  though  he 
thinks  at  first  that  he  is  far  more  than 
a  match.  This  is  the  way  in  which 
aristocratic   France   deals   with   the 


American.  It  baffles  him,  confounds 
him,  cuts  off  his  ambition  and  his 
ideal,  and  makes  an  end  of  what 
was  to  have  been  so  good — his  future, 
the  reward  of  his  exertions,  the  fine 
dream  upon  which  he  had  concen- 
trated all  his  hopes." — Blackwood's 
Magazine. 

Nick  of  the  Woods,  hero  and  title 
of  a  novel  by  Robert  Montgomery 
Bird.  In  early  boyhood  Nick  had 
seen  his  home  destroyed  and  his 
family  and  friends  butchered  by 
Indians.  He  devotes  his  life  to 
revenge,  and  eventually  succeeds  in 
killing  not  only  every  member  of  the 
band  of  devastators  but  hundreds  of 
other  red  fiends.  The  body  of  every 
victim  is  marked  by  a  rude  cross 
cut  upon  the  breast.  Astounded  at 
this  wholesale  slaughter  by  an  unseen 
and  undetected  foe  the  Indians 
identify  him  with  their  devil  Jib- 
benainosay. 

Nickleby,  Mrs.  Mary,  in  Dickens's 
Nicholas  Nickleby,  mother  of  the  hero 
and  his  sister  Kate.  She  is  weak  and 
vain  and  foolish,  rambling  in  her 
mind  and  delightfully  irrelevant  and 
inconsequent  in  her  talk.  While  Mrs. 
Malaprop  only  messes  up  her  words, 
Mrs.  Nickleby  creates  inextricable 
confusion  in  ideas.  "  The  name 
began  with  '  B  '  and  ended  with  *  g  '  I 
am  sure.  Perhaps  it  was  Waters" 
— ^this  is  the  sort  of  thing  wherein 
she  weltered.  In  a  letter  to  Leigh 
J  Hunt,  Dickens  expressly  stated  that 
Mrs.  Nickleby  was  drawn  from  his 
mother,  as  Micawber  was  drawn 
from  his  father.  He  never  forgave 
either  of  his  parents  for  placing  him 
as  a  boy  in  a  blacking  bottle  es- 
tablishment. See  FORTER,  Life  of 
Dickens,  iii,  8. 

Nickleby,  Nicholas,  hero  and  title 
of  a  novel  (1838),  by  Dickens.  Son 
of  a  poor  country  gentleman  who 
left  him  fatherless  at  an  early  age, 
Nicholas  had  to  make  his  own  way 
in  the  world.  He  was  successively  an 
usher  at  the  infamous  Dotheboys 
Hall,  a  Yorkshire  school  run  by  Wack- 
ford  Squeers;  the  first  walking  gentle- 
man in  Mr.  Crummles's  theatrical 
company;  a  clerk  in  the  ofi&ce  of  the 


Noggs 


279 


North 


Cheery ble  Brothers;  and  finally  a 
London  merchant  on  his  own  account. 
He  marries  Madeline  Bray. 

Nicholas  Nickleby  is  Dickens's  first  ro- 
mantic novel  because  it  is  his  first  novel  with 
a  proper  and  romantic  hero,  which  means, 
of  course,  a  somewhat  chivalrous  young 
donkey  .  .  .  Mr.  Vincent  Crummies 
had  a  colossal  intellect;  and  I  always  have 
a  fancy  that  under  all  his  pomposity  he  saw 
things  more  keenly  than  he  allowed  others 
to  see.  The  moment  he  saw  Nicholas  Nick- 
leby, almost  in  rags  and  limping  along  the 
high  road,  he  engaged  him  (you  will  remem- 
ber) as  first  walking  gentleman.  He  was 
right.  Nobody  could  be  more  of  a  first 
walking  gentleman  than  Nicholas  Nickleby 
was  before  he  went  on  to  the  boards  of 
Mr.  Vincent  Crummles's  theatre  and  he 
remained  the  first  walking  gentleman  after 
he  had  come  off. — G.  K.  Chesterton. 

Noggs,  Newman,  in  Dickens's 
novel,  Nicholas  Nickleby,  a  man  of 
gentle  breeding  who  has  been  ruined 
by  Ralph  Nickleby  and  enters  his 
service  to  ruin  him  in  turn.  At  last 
he  has  the  satisfaction  of  telling  him 
what  he  has  done,  "  face  to  face,  man 
to  man  and  like  a  man."  He  is 
described  as  a  tall  man  with  two 
goggle  eyes,  of  which  one  is  a  fixture, 
a  rubictmd  nose,  a  cadaverous  face 
and  ill-fitting  clothes,  much  the 
worse  for  wear  and  very  much  too 
small.  He  rarely  spoke  tinless  spoken 
to,  and  had  a  trick  of  rubbing  his 
hands  slowly  over  each  other,  crack- 
ing the  joints  of  his  fingers  and 
squeezing  them  into  all  possible  dis- 
tortions. 

Nolan,  Philip,  hero  of  E.  E.  Hale's 
story,  The  Man  Without  a  Country 
(1863).  An  officer  of  the  United 
States  Navy,  he  is  implicated  in  the 
treason  of  Aaron  Burr  and  has  doubly 
damned  himself  by  expressing  a  hope 
that  never  again  would  he  hear  the 
name  of  the  United  States.  He  is 
taken  at  his  word;  passed  from  one 
man-of-war  to  another,  never  allowed 
to  talk  on  national  affairs,  nor  to  see 
an  American  paper,  nor  to  read  a 
history  of  the  United  States,  nor  to 
hear  the  name  of  his  country  until  at 
last,  homesick  and  heartsick  after  an 
exile  of  fifty-five  years,  he  dies  praying 
for  the  fatherland  which  he  had  dis- 
owned and  which  had  disowned  him 
in  return.     Subsequently  Mr.  Hale 


made  him  the  hero  of  a  novel,  Philip 
Nolan  and  his  Friends  ^  which  was 
never  popular. 

Noma  of  the  Fitful  Head,  the 
sobriquet  of  Ulla  Troil  in  Scott's  The 
Pirate,  a  mysterious  personage  who 
imagines  herself  gifted  with  super- 
natural powers.  Scott  explains  that 
she  is  meant  to  be  "  an  instance  of 
that  singular  kind  of  insanity  "  which 
imposes  upon  itself  as  well  as  upon 
others.  Deeming  that  her  father's 
death  had  taken  her  from  humanity 
to  be  "  something  pre-eminently 
powerful,  pre-eminently  wretched " 
she  claimed  to  be  the  Sovereign  of  the 
Seas  and  Winds,  and  her  claims  were 
generally  allowed  by  the  superstitious. 

Noma  is  a  new  incarnation  of  Meg 
Merrilies,  and  palpably  the  same  in  the 
spirit.  Less  degraded  in  her  habits  and 
associates  and  less  lofty  and  pathetic  in  her 
denunciations,  she  reconciles  fewer  contra- 
dictions and  is  on'  the  whole  inferior  perhaps 
to  her  prototype  but  is  far  above  the  rank 
of  a  mere  imitated  or  borrowed  character. — 
Francis  Jeffreys:    Essays. 

Norris,  Aunt,  in  Jane  Austen's 
novel,  Mansfield  Park  (18 14),  a  bust- 
ling, self-important,  miserly,  irritable 
old  woman  who  worries  her  niece 
Fanny  Price  by  continual  harrying 
and  nagging. 

A  mean,  stingy  tusybody.  Aunt  Norris 
Is  the  most  amusing  widow  in  fiction.  She 
talks  Sir  Thomas  into  adopting  Fanny 
Price,  and  talks  him  out  of  expecting  her 
to  take  any  share  in  the  concurrent  expenses 
with  equal  facility.  She  sponges  on  Mrs. 
Rush  worth's  housekeeper  till  she  goes  home 
laden  with  plants,  cream  cheeses  and  golden 
pheasants'  eggs,  which  are  to  be  hatched  in 
Lady  Bertram's  coops.  She  bullies  poor 
Fanny  mercilessly.  She  schemes  for  the 
marriage  of  the  dull  Rushworth  with  the 
handsome  Maria,  and  so  enjoys  planning 
the  green  baize  curtain  for  the  theatricals 
that  she  actually  winks  at  the  indecorum  of 
"Lovers'  Vows,"  and  is  so  busy  saving  the 
absent  Sir  Thomas  "at  least  two  shillings 
in  curtain  rings"  as  to  be  quite  blind  to 
Maria's  flirtations. — Rowland  Grey. 

North,    Christopher    or    Kit,    the 

pseudonym  under  which  Prof.  John 
Wilson  contributed  to  Blackwood's 
Magazine.  It  first  arose  in  connection 
with  the  famous  series  of  dialogues, 
Noctes  AmhrosiancB,  which  were  sup- 
posed to  take  place  in  the  "  blue 
parlor "   of  a   tavern  kept  by  one 


Northumberland 


280 


Nym 


Ambrose  in  Prince's  Street,  Edin- 
burgh. The  protagonist  of  the  occa- 
sion and  the  ruler  of  the  roast  was 
ever  Christopher  North; — ^his  prin- 
cipal interlocutors  were  Timothy 
Tickler,  an  idealized  portrait  of 
Robert  Sym  (i  750-1 844),  an  Edin- 
burgh attorney;  and  the  Ettrick 
Shepherd,  a  good-natured  caricature 
of  the  poet  Hogg.  Wilson  collected 
his  miscelleanous  essays  into  book 
form  under  the  title  Recreations  of 
Christopher  North  (1842),  but  his 
poems  and  novels  appeared  imder 
his  own  name. 

Northumberland,  Henry  Percy, 
Earl  of,  in  Shakespeare's  Richard  II 
and  in  the  two  parts  of  Henry  IV,  a 
powerful  nobleman  who  joins  Boling- 
broke's  rebellion  against  Richard  and 
having  helped  to  make  him  Henry  IV 
joins  in  a  rebellion  against  him.  At 
Shrewsbury  he  is  "  crafty  sick  "  and 
fails  to  go  to  the  aid  of  his  son  (see 
Hotspur)  and  allies.  In  //  Henry  I V 
he  again  fails  the  allies  and  Henry 
triumphs.  Warwick  truthfully  says 
of  him: 

King  Richard  might  create  a  perfect  guess 
That  great  Northumberland  then  false  to 

him 
Would,  of  that  seed,  grow  to  a  greater  false- 
ness. 

J I  Henry  IV.  iii,  i. 

Norval,  Old,  in  John  Home's  trsig- 
edy,  Douglas  (1757),  a  Scotch  shep- 
herd who  finds  the  infant  heir  of  the 
Douglases  exposed  in  a  basket  and 
brings  him  up  as  his  own  son. 

Young  Norval,  the  lad,  at  the  age 
of  eighteen,  saves  the  life  of  Lord 
Randolph  and  is  rewarded  by  a  com- 
mission in  the  army.  Now  Lord 
Randolph  is  the  second  husband  of 
Lady  Douglas.  Glenarvon,  his  heir, 
seeks  to  stir  up  strife  by  exciting  Lord 
Randolph's  jealousy.  Young  Norval 
kills  Glenarvon.  Lord  Randolph  kills 
Norval  and  then  finds  too  late  that 
he  has  slain  his  wife's  son  by  her  first 
marriage;  the  wife  in  despair  throws 
herself  over  a  precipice. 

Nourmahal  {Persian,  the  Light  of 
the  Harem),  heroine  of  the  fourth  and 
last  tale  in  Moore's  Lalla  Rookh 
(18 1 7),  called  after  her  The  Light  of  the 


Haram  (sic).  The  favorite  Sultana 
of  the  Emperor  Selim,  she  quarrels 
with  her  consort  during  the  Feast  of 
Roses  in  the  Vale  of  Cashmere. 
Repenting  after  the  sullen  fit  has 
passed  she  applies  to  an  enchantress, 
who  invokes  a  spirit  to  teach  her  an 
irresistible  song.  She  sings  it  masked 
to  the  offended  monarch  and  when 
his  heart  is  softened  by  its  sweetness 
throws  off  her  disguise  and  springs 
with  fonder  welcome  than  ever  into 
his  outstretched  arms. 

Nurse  to  Juliet,  in  Shakespeare's 
Romeo  and  Juliet. 

The  Nurse  is  a  coarse,  kindly,  garrulous, 
consequential  old  body,  with  vulgar  feelings 
and  a  vulgarized  air  of  rank;  she  is  on  terms 
of  long  standing  familiarity  with  her  master, 
her  mistress,  and  Juliet,  and  takes  all 
manner  of  liberties  with  them;  but  love  has 
made  Juliet  a  woman  and  independent  of 
her  old  foster  mother. — E.  Dowdkn:  Shake- 
speare Primer. 

Nydia,  in  Bulwer's  Last  Days  of 
Pompeii,  a  blind  girl  who  weaves 
garlands  of  flowers  and  sells  them  in 
the  public  places  of  the  doomed  city. 
A  Greek  of  noble  birth  and  gentle 
nurture,  she  had  been  stolen  in 
infancy  from  her  parents,  sold  into 
slavery  and  rescued  from  a  brutal 
taskmaster  by  the  hero,  Glaucus.  She 
repays  him  with  the  love  of  an  intense 
and  passionate  heart,  but  the  love, — 
unrequited,  even  unsuspected  by  its 
object,  embittered  by  despondency 
and  jealousy, — finally  drives  her  to 
crime,  despair  and  death.  Not  only 
in  her  history,  but  in  her  beauty,  her 
simplicity,  her  purity,  her  wayward 
and  capricious  childishness,  Nydia  is 
obviously  borrowed  from  Goethe's 
Mignon,  with,  perhaps,  a  few  hints 
from  Fenella  and  Esmeralda,  the 
characters  in  which  Walter  Scott  and 
Victor  Hugo  followed  the  same  great 
original. 

Nym,  in  Shakespeare's  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor,  a  corporal  under  Falstaff. 
He  does  not  appear  in  Henry  IV,  but 
in  Henry  V  he  emerges  again  as  an 
ensign.  An  arrant  rogue  and  a 
coward,  he  and  Bardolph  are  hanged. 
To  nym  is  a  cant  word  still  extant 
among  English  thieves,  meaning  to 
pilfer,  to  steal. 


Oakhurst 


281 


Ochiltree 


Oakhurst,  John,  a  professional 
gambler  in  the  California  mining 
camps  of  1849,  a  favorite  creation  of 
Bret  Harte  who  brings  him  into  many 
of  his  short  stories.  He  is  incidentally 
sketched  in  The  Luck  of  Roaring 
Camp, — "  Oakhurst,  a  gambler,  had 
the  melancholy  air  and  intellectual 
abstraction  of  a  Hamlet  " — and  he 
commits  suicide  from  the  noblest 
motives  in  the  next  sketch  in  the 
same  volimie,  The  Outcasts  of  Poker 
Flat.  He  was  resuscitated  whenever 
Mr.  Harte  needed  him  for  the  pur- 
pose of  his  plot.    See  Hamlin,  Jack. 

We  think  it  probable  that  none  but  a 
man  would  care  for  the  portrait  of  such  a 
gambler  as  Mr.  John  Oakhurst,  or  would 
discern  the  cunning  touches  with  which  it 
is  done,  in  its  blended  shades  of  good  and 
evil  .  .  .  Perhaps  Oakhurst  would  not, 
in  actual  life,  have  shot  himself  to  save  pro- 
visions for  a  starving  boy  and  girl;  and  per- 
haps that  poor  ruined  Mother  Shipton  was 
not  really  equal  to  the  act  ascribed  to  her: 
but  Mr.  Harte  contrives  to  have  it  touch 
one  like  the  truth,  and  that  is  all  we  can 
ask  of  him. — W.  D.  Howklls. — Atlantic 
Monthly.  May,  1870. 

Obennann.  Hero  and  title  of  a 
famous  book  (1804) — a  psychological 
study  rather  than  a  novel — ^in  which 
the  author,  Etienne  de  Senancour, 
reveals  the  workings  of  his  own  mor- 
bid yet  noble  mind.  Through  the 
medium  of  a  series  of  letters  written 
from  day  to  day  without  any  recorded 
answers,  Obennann  voices  his  dis- 
appointments, his  disillusions,  his 
empty  hopes,  his  vague  and  restless 
aspirations.  Looking  back  at  the 
weariness  and  satiety  which  eclipsed 
the  pagan  world  he  recognizes  the 
new  life  that  came  in  with  Christian- 
ity; laments  the  gradual  waning  of 
the  hfegiving  faith  and  confesses  him- 
self unable  to  join  in  the  hopes  held 
out  by  the  newer  faith  now  supplant- 
ing it.  What  shall  be  in  the  future 
is  not  for  him  to  share  because  he  is 
hopelessly  wedded  to  a  past  that  is 
no  more. 

I  turn  thy  leaves  I    I  feel  their  breath 

Once  more  upon  me  roll; 
That  air  of  languor,  cold,  and  death. 

Which  brooded  o'er  thy  soul. 
•       •*««*** 


A  fever  in  these  pages  burns 

Beneath  the  calm  they  feign; 
A  wounded  human  spirit  turns. 
Here,  on  its  bed  of  pain. 
Matthew  Arnold,  Stanzas  in  Memory 

of  the  Author  of  Obermann,  1849. 

Oberon,  in  Shakespeare's  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,  the  king  of 
the  fairies,  consort  of  Queen  Titania. 
He  was  the  dwarf  Alberich  in  the 
Nibulengen  Lied  who  guarded  the 
treasure  of  the  Nibelungs  but  was 
overcome  by  Siegfried.  He  was  the 
Auberon  of  the  legendary  history  of 
the  Merovingian  dynasty,  where  he 
figures  as  a  magician  and  the  brother 
of  Merovee.  He  was  Alberich,  king 
of  the  dwarfs,  who  aids  Ortnit  in  his 
wooing.  He  makes  his  first  appear- 
ance as  Oberon,  king  of  the  fairies,  in 
Huon  of  Bordeaux  where  Shakespeare 
undoubtedly  found  him  and  made 
him  his  own.    See  Oberon  in  vol.  11. 

Oblonsky,  Prince  Stepane  Arcadie- 
vitch,  best  known  to  his  own  circle 
as  Stiva,  a  character  in  Tolstoy's 
novel  Anna  Karenina. 

To  think  of  him  as  anything  except  Stiva 
is  diflScult.  His  air  souriant,  his  good  looks, 
his  satisfaction;  his  "ray"  which  made  the 
Tartar  waiter  at  the  club  joyful  in  contem- 
plating it;  his  pleasure  in  oysters  and  cham- 
pagne, his  pleasure  in  making  people  happy 
and  in  rendering  services ;  his  need  of  money, 
his  attachment  to  the  French  governess,  hiis 
distress  at  his  wife's  distress,  his  affection 
for  her  and  the  children;  his  emotion  and 
suffused  eyes,  while  he  quite  dismisses  the 
care  of  providing  funds  for  household  ex- 
penses and  education;  and  the  French 
attachment,  contritely  given  up  to-day  only 
to  be  succeeded  by  some  other  attachment 
to-morrow — no  never,  certainly,  shall  we 
forget  Stiva, 

Ochiltree,  Edie,  in  Scott's  novel  The 
Antiquary,  one  of  the  "  King's  bedes- 
men;" a  travelling  beggar  licensed  by 
the  crown  who  was  on  familiar  terms 
with  gentle  and  simple  alike.  He  was 
drawn  from  Andrew  Gemmels,  an 
Ayrshire  man,  a  native  not  of  Ochil- 
tree but  of  Old  Cumnock  the  adja- 
cent parish.  Like  Edie  he  fought  at 
Fontenoy.  When  his  soldiering  days 
were  over,  he  assumed  the  Blue  Gown 
of  the  bedesman  and  drifted  into  the 
vagrant  life  which  characterized  his 
remaining  years.  He  died  in  1793,  ac- 
cording to  his  tombstone,  aged  io6. 


O'Ferrall 


282 


Old  Mortality 


[Andrew]  was  the  best  known  gaberlunzie 
on  both  sides  of  the  border.  His  stories  of 
his  campaigns  and  adventures  in  foreign 
countries,  his  flow  of  wit  and  drollery,  his 
skill  at  the  dambrods  (draughts)  and  other 
agreeable  qualities  rendered  him  a  general 
favorite,  and  secured  him  a  cordial  reception 
and  free  quarters  in  every  shepherd's  cottage 
and  farm  kitchen  within  the  sphere  of  his 
peregrinations.  Scott's  description  of  him  is 
that  of  a  remarkably  fine  old  figure,  very 
tall,  and  maintaining  a  soldier-like  manner 
and  address  .  .  .  Unlike  the  Edie  of 
fiction  Andrew  was  somewhat  fond  of  the 
"siller  "  and  was  supposed  to  carry  consider- 
able sums  about  his  person. — W.  S.  Crock- 
ett:   The  Scott  Originals,  p.  I37. 

O'Ferrall,  Trilby,  heroine  of  George 
du  Maurier's  novel  Trilhy  (1895),  an 
artist's  model  seventeen  years  old 
and  in  love  with  '*  Little  Billee " 
Bagot  when  the  story  begins.  She 
was  an  orphan,  the  daughter  of  an 
Irish  gentleman  in  English  orders 
who  had  lost  his  living  through  drink 
and  married  a  Paris  barmaid,  illegiti- 
mate but  of  aristocratic  connections. 
Trilby's  love  opens  her  eyes  to  the 
fact  that  her  antecedents  are  shady, 
that  posing,  especially  "  in  the  alto- 
gether "  (nudity)  is  not  respectable 
and  that  otherwise  she  has  so  erred 
against  the  social  code  as  to  be  unfit 
to  enter  the  Bagot  family.  So  though 
she  had  agreed  to  an  engagement 
with  Little  Billee  she  breaks  it  for  his 
sake  and  disappears  out  of  his  life 
to  reappear  as  a. famous  singer  hypno- 
tized into  melodic  utterance  by  a 
villain  named  Svengali  {q.v.). 

Oldbuck,  Jona^an,  in  Scott's 
novel  The  Antiquary,  the  Laird  of 
Monkbarns,  whose  antiquarian  tastes 
make  him  the  sponsor  for  the  novel. 
An  old  bachelor,  full  of  learning,  wit 
and  drollery,  he  knows  how  to  express 
sound  thought  in  quaint  and  pregnant 
sentences.  Scott  owns  that  the  char- 
acter was  drawn  from  an  old  friend 
of  his  father's,  George  Constable 
(17 19-1803),  a  retired  lawyer  whose 
tastes  and  whimsies  kinned  him  to 
Oldbuck. 

Constable  spent  many  of  his  Edinburgh 
Sundays  with  the  Scotts — ever  a  welcome 
break  in  the  austerity  of  the  day  to  the 
younger  generation,  who  coaxed  Constable 
to  turn  tne  conversation  from  its  severely 
Calvinistic  tone  to  subjects  of  history  and 
auld  lang  syne.  He  remembered  the 
Jacobite  uprising  of  '45  and  told  excellent 


stories,  with  a  strong  dash  of  peculiar 
caustic  humor.  See  S.  R.  Crockett:  The 
Scott  Originals,  p.  123. 

Oldcastle,  Sir  John,  Shakespeare's 
original  name  for  Falstaff  in  both 
parts  of  Henry  IV  (1588).  A  drama 
called  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  now  known 
to  be  by  Arthur  Munday,  and  printed 
in  1600,  was  ascribed  to  Shakespeare 
on  the  title  page.  A  knight  of  the 
same  name  also  figures  in  an  old  play 
of  imcertain  date  and  authorship.  The 
Famous  Victories  of  Henry  V,  as  one 
of  Prince  Hal's  boon  companions. 
Shakespeare  took  some  of  his  material 
from  this  play,  including  the  name  of 
Oldcastle,  which  was  speedily  changed 
to  the  immortal  one  of  Falstafif .  This 
is  evident  from  3  oversights  in  the 
printed  texts.  In  the  quarto  of  1600 
the  syllable  Old  remains  prefixed  to  a 
speech  of  Falstaff 's.  _  Not  only  in 
this  quarto  but  also  in  both  Folios 
and  consequently  in  all  subsequent 
printings  a  now  meaningless  pun  is 
retained  in  an  allusion  to  Falstaff  as 
"My  Old  Lad  of  the  Castle"  (7 
Henry  IV,  i,  ii,  48),  together  with 
another  allusion  to  Falstaff  as  "  page 
to  Thomas  Mowbray,  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk "  (II  Henry  IV,  iii,  ii,  28) ,  which 
is  true  of  the  historical  Oldcastle. 
This  historical  Oldcastle  is  better 
known  as  Lord  Cobham,  the  Lollard 
martyr.  Lastly,  in  the  Epilogue  to 
II  Henry  /F,  Shakespeare  wrote: 
"  Falstaff  shall  die  of  a  sweat  unless 
he  be  killed  with  your  hard  opinions, 
for  Oldcastle  died  a  martyr  and  this 
is  not  the  man."  Rowe  says  that 
Elizabeth  acting  on  behalf  of  the 
Cobhams  of  that  day  ordered  the 
change  of  name.  The  disclaimer  in 
the  epilogue,  therefore,^  was  probably 
no  more  than  an  ingenious  artifice  to 
ward  off  the  resentment  of  a  powerful 
family  as  well  as  to  make  that  appear 
a  gratuitous  recognition  of  propriety 
which  was  in  reality  obediefice  to  a 
royal  command. 

Did  you  never  see 
The  play  where  the  fat  knight,  hight  Old- 
castle, 
Did  tell  you  truly  what  this  honor  was. 

Fieuj:    Amends  for  Ladies  {161S). 

Old  Mortality,  in  Scott's  novel  of 
that  name  (18 16),  the  nickname  of 


OUver 


283 


Ophelia 


Robert  Paterson  (1715-1801)  a  re- 
ligious enthusiast  who  left  his  home 
about  1758  to  wander  about  until  his 
death,  repairing  and  erecting  grave- 
stones to  the  memory  of  the  perse- 
cuted Covenanters.  The  story — 
which  describes  the  conflict  of  the 
Covenanters  in  1 670-1 671  with  the 
royal  forces  under  Claverhouse — 
purports  to  have  been  told  by  Pater- 
son to  the  author  as  Jedediah  Cleish- 
botham  and  licked  into  proper  naira- 
tive  shape  by  Cleishbotham's  assist- 
ant Pattieson.  It  was  Scott's  friend 
Joseph  Train  who  suggested  to  him 
that  a  story  about  Claverhouse  might 
be  put  into  the  mouth  of  Old  Mor- 
tality,— "  Would  he  not  do  as  well  as 
the  Minstrel  did  in  the  Lay."  "  Old 
Mortality?"  asked  Scott;  "  who  is 
he?  "  "  Never  shall  I  forget,"  says 
Train,  "  the  eager  interest  with 
which  he  listened  while  I  related  to 
him  what  I  knew  of  old  Robert 
Paterson,  the  wandering  inscription 
cutter."  On  departing,  Train  prom- 
ised that  on  his  return  to  Galloway 
he  would  collect  all  available  par- 
ticulars. Scott  himself  had  met  the 
famous  original  in  1793. 

Oliver,  in  Shakespeare's  As  You 
Like  Itf  elder  brother  to  Orlando  who 
plunders  his  brother  of  his  poor 
inheritance  through  sheer  jealousy. 
He  is  suddenly  converted  when 
Orlando  saves  his  life,  proposes  to 
give  up  all  his  possessions  to  Orlando 
and  marries  Celia  under  her  feigned 
name  of  Aliena,  imagining  that  she 
is  a  poor  and  lowly  shepherdess.  • 

Olivia,  in  Shakespeare's  Twelfth 
Night,  a  beautiful  woman  beloved  by 
the  duke  Orsino.  She  falls  in  love 
with  Cesario,  his  messenger,  unaware 
that  the  lad  is  simply  Viola  in  male 
disguise.  She  readily  transfers  her 
affections  to  Sebastian,  Viola's  twin 
brother.  She  anticipates  Priscilla 
Mullens  by  telling  the  ambassador: 

But  would  you  undertake  another  suit  ? 
I  had  rather  hear  you  to  soUcit  that 
Than  music  from  the  spheres. 

Omnium,  Palliser  Plantagenet, 
Duke  of,  one  of  Anthony  Trollope's 
most  successful  characters  who  first 
appears  as  Plantagenet  Palliser,  with 


his  wife  Glencora,  in  Can  You  For- 
give Her  (1864),  and  gathers  in  impor- 
tance as  he  passes  through  Phineas 
Finn  (1866)  and  Phineas  Redux 
(1874)  until  at  last  he  reaches  the 
height  of  his  ambition  as  English 
premier  in  The  Prime  Minister  (1876). 
The  series  was  concluded  in  1880  with 
The  Duke's  Children.  He  is  a  typical 
English  gentleman,  cold,  shy,  sen- 
sitive, proud,  scrupulously  honest 
and  honorable,  devoted  to  his 
country's  service,  cherishing  high 
ideals  but  absolutely  without  charm 
or  magnetism.  Lady  Glencora,  like 
himself,  is  universally  respected  but 
nowhere  popular. 

I  think  that  Plantagenet  Palliser,  Duke 
of  Omnium,  is  a  perfect  gentleman.  If  he 
be  not,  then  I  am  unable  to  describe  a  gentle- 
man. She  is  by  no  means  a  perfect  lady; 
but  if  she  be  not  all  over  a  woman,  then  am 
I  not  able  to  describe  a  woman.  I  do  not 
think  it  probable  that  my  name  will  remain 
among  those  who  in  the  next  century  will 
be  known  as  the  writers  of  English  prose 
fiction;  but  if  it  does,  that  permanence  of 
success  will  probably  rest  on  the  character 
of  Plantagenet  Palliser,  Lady  Glencora,  and 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Crawley. — Anthony  Trol- 
lope:    An  Autobiography,  p.  313. 

Oneiza,  in  Southey's  Thalaba  the 
Destroyer,  books  vi  and  vii,  daughter 
of  Moath,  a  well-to-do  Bedouin  who 
is  carried  off  by  violence  to  the  para- 
dise of  pleasure,  and  there  meets 
Thalaba,  who  rescues  her  and  himself 
before  either  had  been  contaminated 
by  its  temptations.  They  are  married 
but  she  dies  on  the  bridal  night. 

Ophelia,  in  Shakespeare's  Hamlet, 
daughter  of  Polonius  and  intended 
wife  of  Hamlet.  He  is  high-handed 
and  tyrannic  over  her  in  carrying  out 
his  assumed  madness.  The  death  of 
her  father  drives  her  insane  (Act  iv, 
Sc.  5)  and  she  ends  by  drowning  her- 
self, unintentionally,  in  a  brook 
(iv,  7). 

Ophelia  Is  a  character  almost  too  exquis- 
itely touching  to  be  dwelt  upon.  Oh  rose 
of  May,  oh  flower  too  soon  faded!  Her  love, 
her  madness,  her  death,  are  described  with 
the  truest  touches  of  tenderness  and  pathos. 
It  is  a  character  which  nobody  but  Shake- 
speare could  have  drawn  in  the  way  that 
he  has  done,  and  to  the  conception  of  which 
there  is  not  even  the  smallest  approach, 
except  in  some  of  the  old  romantic  ballads. 
— Hazutt:  Characters  of  Shakespeare's 
Plays. 


Opimis 


284 


Orlando 


Opimiam,  Dr.,  in  Thomas  L.  Pea- 
cock's prose  satire  Gryll Grange  (i860), 
a  lover  of  Greek  and  Madeira,  evi- 
dently drawn  from  the  author  him- 
self and  serving  as  a  vehicle  for  his 
reactionary  views  on  education,  mod- 
em inventions,  reforms  and  reformers. 
Dr.  Opimiam  sums  up  the  material 
side  of  his  own  character  in  the  phrase 
"  Whatever  happens  in  the  world 
never  let  it  spoil  your  dinner." 

Orgon,  in  MoU^re's  comedy  Tar- 
tuffe,  brother-in-law  of  the  titular 
character,  whose  faith  in  that  relig- 
ious hypocrite  transcends  even  that 
of  his  mother  so  that  he  virtually 
abdicates  all  authority  in  favor  of  the 
usurper.  The  rest  of  the  family, 
including  his  beautiful  young  wife, 
his  son  and  daughter,  his  brother  and 
the  servant  are  all  banded  together 
in  opposition.  The  self-deception  of 
Orgon  is  indeed  almost  too  complete 
throughout  the  early  part  of  the  play. 
One  may  endure  that  a  woman  should 
be  thus  hoodwinked,  but  a  man  is 
expected  to  know  the  world  better. 

Oriana,  in  the  mediaeval  romance 
Amadis  of  Gaul,  a  daughter  of  the 
mythical  Lisuarte,  King  of  England, 
and  the  lady  love  of  Amadis  (q.v.). 
Being  represented  as  the  gentlest, 
loveliest  and  most  faithful  of  women, 
hers  was  a  favorite  name  of  compli- 
ment. The  literary  courtiers  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  styled  her  the  "  fair  "  or 
*'  matchless  "  Oriana.  A  series  of 
madrigals  addressed  to  her  as  Oriana 
was  published  in  1601.  They  cele- 
brate her  beauty  and  chastity  at 
sixty-eight.  Ben  Jonson  borrowed 
the  term  for  Anne  the  queen  of 
James  I. 

Origilla,  in  Ariosto's  Orlando  Fu- 
rioso  (Books  viii-ix),  the  faithless  love 
of  Gryphon  who  forsook  him  for 
Martano. 

Orion,  hero  and  title  of  an  epic 
poem  (1843),  by  Robert  Hengist 
Home,  meant,  as  the  author  subse- 
quently explained,  "to  present  a  type 
of  the  struggle  of  man  with  himseH — 
that  is  to  say,  the  contest  between 
the  intellect  and  the  senses,  when 
powerful  energies  are  equally  bal- 
anced."   He  is  a  truly  practical  be- 


liever in  his  gods  and  his  own  con- 
science; a  man  with  the  strength  of 
a  giant,  innocently  wise;  with  a  heart 
expanding  towards  the  largeness  and 
warmth  of  nature  and  a  spirit  im- 
consciously  aspiring  to  the  stars. 

Orlando,  hero  of  Shakespeare's  As 
You  Like  It  (1598)  and  lover  of 
Rosalind.  The  younger  son  of  Sir 
Rowland  de  Boys,  his  elder  brother 
Oliver  through  jealousy  neglects  his 
education,  persecutes  him  and  even 
seeks  to  kill  him.  In  a  wrestling  bout 
at  the  court  of  the  usurping  duke, 
Orlando  wins  the  love  of  Rosalind, 
but  when  he  flees  to  the  forest  of 
Arden  he  fails  to  recognize  his  fellow 
exile  in  the  masculine  garb  of  Gany- 
mede until  she  reveals  the  truth. 

In  choosing  the  names  Orlando  and 
Oliver,  Shakespeare  was  influenced  by 
the  Italian  romances  (see  next  entry) 
and  the  same  influence  is  curiously 
evident  in  other  parallelisms,  even  to 
the  selection  of  the  Forest  of  Arden 
as  the  scene  of  the  comedy.  Ariosto's 
Orlando  hangs  up  poems  to  Angelica 
in  the  Forest  of  Arden. 

Orlando,  hero  of  a  famous  triad  of 
Italian  poems,  Pulci's  Morgante  Mag- 
giore  (1488) ;  Bojardo's  Orlando  Inna- 
tnoraio  (1495)  or  Orlando  in  Love  and 
Ariosto's  Orlando  Furioso  (1516)  or 
Orlando  Mad.  Orlando  is  Italian  for 
Roland  and  the  hero  is  the  Carlo- 
vingian  Paladin  placed  among  newly 
invented  circumstances  (which  ignore 
or  modify  the  elder  French  legends) 
and  treated  mockheroically  with  a 
good  deal  of  license  and  levity. 
Pulci's  poem  is  an  independent  narra- 
tive of  Orlando's  adventures  as  the 
companion  of  giants  and  the  foe  of 
enchanters,  Morgante  Maggiore  being 
a  huge  creature  he  had  converted  to 
Christianity.  Bojardo  accepts  the 
general  theme  of  a  war  between  Char- 
lemagne and  the  Saracens,  but  places 
the  scene  under  the  walls  of  Paris, 
which  is  simultaneously  besieged  by 
Agramante,  Emperor  of  Africa,  and 
Garcilasso,  King  of  Sericana.  The 
immaculate  Roland  becomes  in  his 
hands  the  gallant  Orlando,  the  recre- 
ant husband  of  Aldabella,  the  sport 
of  a  light  o'  love  named  Angelica,  who 


Orleans 


286 


Osborne 


has  come  from  farthest  Asia  to  sow 
dissensions  among  the  Christians. 
Here  Bojardo  left  her.  Ariosto  took 
up  the  thread  of  the  narrative.  An- 
gelica succeeds  in  seducing  Rinaldo, 
who  at  first  had  scorned  her  and 
abandons  him  for  Medoro,  a  captive 
Moor  in  Paris.  She  marries  the  latter 
and  elopes  with  him  to  her  native 
Cathay,  planning  to  make  him  king. 
Orlando  follows  and,  growing  mad 
with  jealousy  and  baffled  love,  wan- 
ders far  and  wide  performing  pro- 
digious deeds  of  strength  on  men, 
cattle  and  trees.  Finally  he  is  cured 
by  Astolfo,  who  has  made  a  visit  to 
the  moon  and  there  in  the  Paradise 
of  Fools  has  recovered  the  lost  wits 
of  his  friend. 

Orleans,  Bastard  of,  in  Shake- 
speare's I  Henry  VI,  is  the  Count  of 
Dunois,  famous  as  one  of  the  greatest 
soldiers  of  his  time  and  the  devoted 
admirer  of  Jeanne  Dare. 

Ormont,  Lord,  hero  of  a  novel, 
Lord  Ormont  and  his  Aminta  (1894), 
by  George  Meredith;  a  sulky  and 
whimsical  nobl^nan  who  refuses  to 
make  public  his  marriage  to  Aminta 
Farrell.  Chafing  under  her  anomalous 
position,  she  is  thrown  much  in  the 
society  of  Ormont's  secretary,  Mat- 
thew Weybum,  between  whom  and 
herself-  there  had  been  a  boy  and  girl 
love  in  their  schooldays.  Finally  with 
the  approval  of  the  author  Matthew 
and  she  elope  to  set  up  a  school  where 
true  honor  is  to  be  taught  and  in  the 
end  Lord  Ormont  commits  to  their 
keeping  his  grandnephew. 

Oronooko,  hero  and  title  of  a  novel 
by  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn  and  of  a  tragedy 
(1696)  by  Thomas  Southern,  founded 
thereon.  The  novel  belongs  to  the 
same  class  of  humanitarian  literature 
as  Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin 
and  Tourgenief's  Notes  of  a  Sports- 
man, but  differs  from  them  in  being 
only  an  embellishment  of  actual  facts 
that  had  come  under  the^  author's 
notice.  Oronooko,  and  his  grand- 
father, an  African  king,  both  fell  in 
love  with  Imoinda,  a  girl  of  their 
own  tribe,  whom  the  monarch  ordered 
to  his  harem.  Oronooko,  in  despair, 
forced  his  way  to  her  chamber  at 


night;  was  discovered,  but  made 
good  his  escape.  The  girl  was  sold 
into  slavery,  and  Oronooko,  lured  on 
board  an  English  slave  ship,  was 
shortly  afterwards  sold  to  a  planter 
in  Surinam  (the  colony  where  Mrs. 
Behn  was  then  living),  who,  by  a 
strange  coincidence,  had  become  the 
owner  of  Imoinda.  Oronooko  plotted 
a  revolt  among  his  fellow-slaves;  the 
plan  was  discovered,  and  he  was 
brutally  flogged.  Enraged  at  the 
indignity,  he  escaped  into  the  woods 
with  Imoinda,  who  was  then  preg- 
nant. But  fearing  she  might  f^ 
into  the  hands  of  their  pursuers,  and 
determined  never  to  be  the  father  of 
a  slave,  he  slew  her,  and  some  days 
afterwards  was  captured  near  her 
dead  body,  half  insensible  from  grief 
and  hunger.  He  was  tied  to  a  post, 
hacked  to  pieces  and  burned.  South- 
em's  chief  deviations  from  the  novel 
are  in  the  introduction  of  a  comic 
underplot,  rightly  censured  for  its 
indecency,  and  in  the  catastrophe 
where  Oronooko  kills  first  the  Gov- 
ernor of  Surinam  and  then  himself. 

Orsino,  Duke  of  Ulyria,  in  Shake- 
speare's Twelfth  Night,  "  a  fresh  and 
stainless  youth, ' '  in  love  with  Olympia. 
In  the  end  he  transfers  his  affections 
to  Viola  who,  disguised  in  male  attire, 
had  served  him  as  a  page. 

Osborne,  Mr.,  in  Thackeray's 
novel.  Vanity  Fair,  an  ignorant, 
vulgar,  hard,  purseproud  Enghsh 
merchant,  who  has  risen  from  poverty 
to  wealth  and  with  a  continually 
inflated  sense  of  his  own  importance. 

Osborne,  George,  in  Thackeray's 
Vanity  Fair,  a  captain  in  the  British 
army,  son  of  old  Osborne,  whom  he 
despises  for  his  ill  breeding  and  social 
lapses,  but  on  whose  continued  favor 
he  complacently  counts.  He  goes 
too  far,  however,  in  the  one  good  deed 
of  his  selfish,  vainglorious  life,  his 
loyalty  to  Amelia  Sedley  whom  he  had 
been  engaged  to  since  childhood,  but 
whom  his  father  would  have  him 
forswear  when  the  Sedleys  are  over- 
whelmed in  financial  difficulties. 
Irritated  by  his  father's  obstinacy; 
softened  also  by  Dobbin's  story  of 
her  siifferings,  he  marries  her  offhand, 


0*Shanter 


286 


Otranto 


thereby  incurring  his  father's  lasting 
wrath.  Six  weeks  later  he  would  have 
been  ready  to  elope  with  Becky 
Sharp.    He  is  killed  at  Waterloo. 

0*Shanter,  Tarn,  hero  and  title  of 
a  poem  (1790)  by  Robert  Burns. 
According  to  his  wife  Tam  was: 

A  blethering,  blustering,  drunken  blellum. 

Nevertheless  in  his  historian's  words: 

Kings  may  be  blest  but  Tam  was  glorious 
O'er  a*  the  ills  o'  life  victorious! 

Late  one  night,  unusually  "  glori- 
ous," he  was  riding  home,  when  he 
noticed  that  the  kirk  of  Alloway  was 
illimiinated  and  peeping  inside  dis- 
covered "  warlocks  and  witches  in  a 
dance  "  while  old  Nick  blew  the  bag- 
pipes. Tarn's  involuntary  shout  of 
"  Well  done  Cutty  Sark!  "  applausive 
of  a  witch  in  a  short  sark  or  petticoat, 
brought  the  whole  pack  after  him  as 
he  fled.  He  spurred  for  the  River 
Doon,  knowing  that  no  witch  would 
cross  running  water,  and  had  safely 
passed  mid-stream  when  she  whom  he 
had  called  Cutty  Sark  reached  over 
and  snatched  off  his  mare's  tail. 

Osric,  in  Hamlet,  a  courtier  who 
has  no  business  in  the  play  except  to 
carry  Laertes*  challenge  to  Hamlet  in 
Act  V,  2. 

He  exists  it  cannot  be  doubted  merely 
as  a  foil  for  Hamlet's  wit  and  melancholy. 
When  the  mind  is  wholly  taken  up  with 
tragic  issues,  when  it  is  brooding  on  a  great 
sorrow,  or  foreboding  a  hopeless  event,  the 
little  daily  affairs  of  life  continue  unaltered; 
tables  are  served,  courtesies  interchanged, 
and  the  wheels  of  society  revolve  at  their 
accustomed  pace.  Osric  is  the  representa- 
tive of  society;  his  talk  is  of  gentility,  skill 
in  fencing,  and  the  elegance  of  the  proffered 
wager. — ^Walter  Ralegh:  Shakespeare, 
In  English  Men  of  Letters  series,  p.  146. 

Othello,  hero  of  Shakespeare's 
tragedy,  Othello  the  Moor  of  Venice 
(1604),  a  Moorish  general  in  the 
service  of  Venice  who  marries  Des- 
demona,  daughter  of  a  senator,  against 
her  father's  will,  is  exonerated  by  the 
senate  of  having  used  any  unlawful 
means  in  gaining  the  maiden  (Act  i, 
Sc.  3),  is  aroused  to  jealousy  by  the 
malignant  insinuations  of  lago  (iii, 
^)  and  kills  Desdemona  and  himself 
in  v,  2.    "  The  noblest  man  of  man's 


making,"  Swinburne  calls  him.  He 
is  not  prone  to  jealousy,  but  on  the 
contrary  is  naturally  trustful,  "  with 
a  kind  of  grand  innocence,"  says 
Dowden,  "retaining  some  of  his  bar- 
baric simpleness  of  soul  in  midst  of 
the  subtle  and  astute  pohticians  of 
Venice."  ^  Great  in  simple  heroic 
action,  he  is  unversed  in  the  complex 
affairs  of  life  and  "  a  stranger  to  the 
malignant  deceits  of  the  debased  Ital- 
ian character."  The  germ  of  the 
story  is  contained  in  Un  Capitano 
Moro,  A  Moorish  (or  Arab)  Captain, 
in  Cinthio's  Hecatommithi,  published 
in  Venice  in  1565.  Shakespeare 
borrowed  the  outlines  of  the  story 
but  none  of  the  names  except  that  of 
Desdemona.  There  is  historical  evi- 
dence that  a  certain  Moro  was  gov- 
ernor of  Cyprus  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury and  that  his  wife  died  under 
mysterious  circumstances.  This  may 
have  been  the  basis  of  Cynthio's  tale. 

Coleridge  has  justly  said  that  the  ago- 
nized doubt  which  lays  hold  of  the  Moor  is 
not  the  jealousy  of  a  man  of  naturally 
jealous  temper,  and  he  contrasts  Othello 
with  Leontes  in  The  Winter's  Tale  and 
Leonatus  in  Cymbeline.  A  mean  watchful- 
ness or  prying  suspiciousness  is  the  last 
thing  that  Othello  could  be  guilty  of.  He 
is  of  a  free  and  noble  nature,  naturally 
trustful,  with  a  kind  of  grand  innocence, 
retaining  some  of  his  barbaric  simpleness 
of  soul  in  midst  of  the  subtle  and  astute 

Eoliticians  of  Venice.  He  is  great  in  simple 
eroic  action,  but  unversed  in  the  complex 
affairs  of  life  and  a  stranger  to  the  malignant 
deceits  of  the  debased  Italian  character. — 
E.  Dowden:    Shakespeare  Primer. 

Otranto,  Manfred,  Prince  of,  hero 
of  Horace  Walpole's  romance,  The 
Castle  of  Otranto  (1764).  The  father 
of  Conrad, — betrothed^  to  Isabella, 
daughter  of  the  Marquis  of  Vicenza, 
— Manfred  decides  to  mairy  that 
lady  himself  when  Conrad  is  found 
in  the  castle  court  dashed  to  pieces 
under  an  enormous  helmet.  Numer- 
ous portents  ensue  to  prevent  his 
canymg  out  his  purpose,  and  in  the 
meantime  Isabella  escapes  to  Friar 
Jerome,  through  the  instrumentality 
of  a  peasant  named  Theodore.  Drops 
of  blood  flow  from  the  nose  of  the 
statue  of  Alphonso,  the  prince  from 
whose  heirs  the  dukedom  had  been 
wrested,  and  in  the  end  the  walls  of 


O'Trigger 


287 


P.P. 


the  castle  are  overthrown  by  an 
earthquake  and  the  statue  of  Al- 
phonso  cries  out  from  the  ruins, 
"  Behold  in  Theodore  the  true  heir 
of  Alphonso."  Manfred  then  resigns 
Isabella  to  Theodore. 

0*Trigger,  Sir  Lucius,  in  Sheridan's 
comedy,  The  Rivals,  a  fire-eating,  for- 
tune-hunting Irish  gentleman,  always 
as  ready  to  forgive  as  to  fight.  The 
r61e  was  a  failure  on  the  first  appear- 
ance of  the  play  partly  from  the  in- 
competence of  the  actor,  but  partly 
also  because  it  was  looked  upon  as  a 
reflection  on  the  Irish.  "  If  any  gen- 
tlemen," wrote  Sheridan,  "opposed 
the  piece  from  that  idea,  I  thank  them 
sincerely  for  their  opposition;  and  if 
the  condemnation^  of  this  comedy 
(however  misconceived  the  provoca- 
tion) could  have  added  one  spark  to 
the  decaying  flame  of  national  attach- 
ment to  the  country  supposed  to  be 
reflected  on,  I  should  have  been  happy 
in  its  fate,  and  might  with  truth  have 
boasted  that  it  had  done  more  real 
service  in  its  failure  than  the  success- 
ful morality  of  a  thousand  stage  novels 
will  ever  effect."  In  its  original  form 
The  Rivals  was  played  twice,  and  then 
withdrawn  for  alterations.  After  an 
interval  of  ten  days  it  was  reproduced, 
and  forthwith  obtained  the  popularity 
it  has  never  forfeited  since.  The  part 
of  Sir  Lucius  was  taken  from  Lee  and 
entrusted  to  Clinch, — a  clever  actor 
who  so  distinguished  himself  by  the 
impersonation  that  Sheridan  gave  him 
the  farce  of  St.  Patrick's  Day  to  pro- 
duce upon  the  occasion  of  his  benefit 
at  the  close  of  the  season. 

Ottilia,  Princess,  in  The  Adventures 
of  Harry  Richmond,  a  novel  by 
George  Meredith. 

Ottilia  was  one  of  those  women  whom 
men  love  passionately  and  know  very  little 
about.  Once  in  a  life  a  man  may  see  such  a 
face — in  lonely  glimpses;  hear  such  a  voice — 
a  music  broken  by  long  pauses  of  absence. 


She  creates  a  tropical  storm  in  his  imagina- 
tion; he  gives  her  his  dreams,  thinks  he  must 
die  for  want  of  her,  and  lives  to  take  a  Janet 
Ilchester  to  wife.  Janet  is  of  the  type  most 
Englishmen  desire  to  have  their  wives,  al- 
though human  weakness  may  lead  their  err- 
ing fancy  towards  Ottilia.  Daily  News, 
November  6,  1871,  reported  in  George  Mere- 
dith, Some  Early  Appreciations,  1909,  by 
Maurice  Buxton  Forman. 

Overreach,  Sir  Giles,  the  principal 
character  in  Philip  Massinger's  com- 
edy, A  New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts 
(1625).  A  usurer  and  an  extortioner, 
he  is  no  miser,  because  he  finds  that 
an  outer  appearance  of  splendor  and 
luxury  furnishes  his  best  snare  for 
the  weak  and  the  gullible.  He  Hves 
luxuriously,  keeps  many  servants,  is 
profuse  in  his  expenditures.  He 
encourages  the  extravagances  of  the 
prodigal,especiallyof  Frank  Wellboms 
his  own  nephew,  whom  he  reduces  to 
pecuniary  straits,  from  which  he  reaps 
his  own  profit,  and  then  seeks  to 
drive  into  crime,  so  that  the  gallows 
may  rid  him  of  a  dangerous  victim. 
He  goads  his  neighbors  into  lawsuits 
in  order  that  he  may  ruin  them  and 
absorb  their  lands.  His  final  purpose 
is  to  marry  his  daughter  (through  a 
prehminary  seduction  planned  by 
himself)  to  a  nobleman  and  so  enjoy 
a  triumph  over  the  lords  and  ladies 
whom  he  has  beggared,  but  who  still 
snub  him.  Finally  the  nephew  enters 
with  other  victims  into  a  plot  which 
beats  him  at  his  own  game  and  Over- 
reach goes  mad  when  he  discovers 
how  the  tables  have  been  turned. 
Edmund  Kean  in  England  and  E.  L. 
Davenport  in  America  were  especially 
famous  in  this  part. 

The  original  of  Overreach  has  been  traced 
to  Sir  Giles  Mompesson  (1584-1651),  a  no- 
torious usurer  who  was  finally  banished  from 
England  for  his  misdeeds.  He  shared  with 
Sir  Francis  Michell  in  the  profits  of  a  patent 
for  the  exclusive  manufacture  of  gold  and 
silver  lace  which  Macaulay  denounced  as 
"the  most  disgraceful  of  all  patents  in  our 
history.'! 


'  P.  P.,  Clerk  of  this  Parish,  the  hero 
of  a  burlesque.  Memoirs,  written  in 
ridicule  of  Burnet's  garrulous  His- 
tory of  My  Ovm  Times  and  usually 
published  among  Pope's  works,  but 


largely,  if  not  entirely,  the  compo- 
sition of  John  Arbuthnot.  P.  P.'s 
pomposity,  pedantry  and  egotism 
have  earned  him  a  high  place  among 
the  braggarts  of  fiction. 


PacMemerton 


288 


Palliser 


Packlemerton,  Jasper,  in  Dickens's 
novel,  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  xxviii 
(1840),  one  of  the  principal  wax- 
figures  in  Mrs.  Jarley's  collection.  In 
Mrs.  Jarley's  words:  "Jasper  courted 
and  married  fourteen  wives  and  de- 
stroyed them  all  by  tickling  the  soles 
of  their  feet  when  they  were  asleep." 

Paddington,  Harry,  in  Gay's  The 
Beggar's  Opera  (1727),  one  of  Mac- 
heath's  gang  of  thieves,  but  a  recog- 
nized failure  among  them,  "  a  poor, 
petty-larceny  rascal,"  says  Peacham, 
"  without  the  least  genius.  That 
fellow,"  continues  this  severe  critic, 
"  though  he  were  to  live  for  six 
months,  would  never  come  to  the 
gallows  with  credit"  (Act  i,  l). 

Paeana,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene, 
book  iv,  9  (1596),  the  daughter  of 
Corflambo,  lovely  to  the  eye,  but 
"  too  loose  of  life  and  eke  too  light." 
She  fell  in  love  with  Amias,  a  captive 
in  her  father's  dungeon,  but  his 
affections  were  otherwise  engaged. 
Now  Amias  had  a  friend,  Placidas, 
who  was  exactly  like  him  in  face  and 
figure.  Placidas,  coming  to  release 
him,  was  mistaken  for  Amias  and 
brought  before  Paeana;  she  was 
delighted  to  find  her  love  reciprocated 
and  married  the  stranger  even  though 
he  had  undeceived  her.  Thenceforth 
she  reformed  her  ways. 

Page,  Master,  in  Shakespeare's 
comedy,  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor 
(1596),  a  gentleman  living  in  Windsor 
whose  wife  is  coveted  by  Sir  John 
Falstaff  and  laid  siege  to  simultane- 
ously with  the  wife  of  his  friend  Ford 
(q.v.). 

Page,  Mistress,  wife  of  Page,  as 
above,  who  being  courted  by  Falstaff, 
plans  with  Mrs.  Ford  to  outwit  him 
and  make  him  ridiculous. 

Page,  Mistress  Anne,  daughter  of 
the  above.  A  young  woman,  bright 
and  clever  and  pretty,  who  loves  and 
is  loved  by  young  Fenton.  But  inas- 
much as  she  has  inherited  a  legacy  of 
£700  she  attracts  two  other  suitors: 
Dr.  Caius,  favored  by  her  mother, 
and  Slender,  whom  her  father  prefers. 
Fenton  wins  her  by  a  stratagem. 

Page,  William,  a  schoolboy,  a 
brother  to  Anne. 


Palemon,  the  lover  of  Lavinia  in 
Thomson's  poetical  paraphrase  of  the 
story  of  Ruth,  included  in  The  Seasons 
— A  utumn  ( 1 730) .  Falconer  took  the 
same  name  for  the  hero  of  his  narra- 
tive poem,  The  Shipwreck  (1756),  who 
is  the  son  of  a  rich  merchant  and  the 
lover  of  Anna.  The  purseproud  mer- 
chant is  wroth  at  the  threatened 
mesalliance,  for  Anna's  father,  Albert, 
is  master  of  one  of  his  ships;  so  he 
sends  Palemon  on  a  voyage  with 
Albert.  The  ship  is  wrecked  near 
Cape  Colonna  in  Attica,  and  Palemon, 
though  rescued  from  the  waves,  dies 
of  the  wotmds  he  has  suffered  in  the 
struggle. 

Palfrey,  Prudence,  heroine  of  a 
novel  of  that  name  (1874),  by  T.  B. 
Aldrich. 

Miss  Prudence  has  traits  of  a  veritable 
girlhood;  it  is  but  too  sadly  natural  that 
her  heart  should  waver  in  its  true  allegiance, 
when  she  finds  Dillingham  at  first  indifferent 
and  then  devoted,  and,  above  all,  wanted 
by  all  the  other  girls!  She  gives  you  the 
sense  of  a  pretty,  sufficiently  wilful,  suffi- 
ciently obedient,  natural,  good-hearted  girl, 
and  tnat  is  as  much  as  one  ought  to  ask  of 
any  heroine. — W.  D.  Howells. 

Pallet,  in  Smollett's  novel.  The 
Adventures  of  Peregrine  Pickle  (1751), 
a  boorish  painter,  "  a  man  without 
any  reverence  for  ancient  customs 
and  modem  etiquette." 

Dr.  John  Moore,  best  known  as  the 
author  of  Zeluco,  was  when  nineteen  years 
of  age  the  companion  and  cicerone  of 
Smollett  in  Paris,  helping  him  with  his  su- 
perior knowledge  of  French.  Smollett  made 
no  secret  that  he  was  picking  up  characters 
to  be  introduced  into  his  novel.  Moore 
remembered  particularly  one  English  artist 
whom  they  encountered  perpetually  in  the 
picture  galleries  and  other  places  of  resort, 
and  who  disgusted  Smollett  by  his  incessant 
talk  about  vertH.  Smollett  had  evidently 
marked  this  man  for  his  purpose;  and, 
accordingly,  in  his  Peregrine  Pickle,  pub- 
lished shortly  after  his  return  to  England, 
Moore  had  no  difficulty  in  recognizing  the 
unfortunate  painter  in  the  character  of 
Pallet. 

Palliser,  Plantagenet,  an  English 
aristocrat,  who  appears  In  many  of 
Trollope's  novels.  See  Omnium, 
Duke  of. 

Mr.  Plantagenet  Palliser  had  appeared  in 
The  Small  House  at  Allington,  but  his  birth 
had  not  been  accompanied  by  many  hopes. 


Pambo 


289 


Pandarus 


In  the  last  pages  of  that  novel  he  is  made  to 
seek  a  remedy  for  a  foolish  false  step  in  life 
by  marrying  the  grand  heiress  of  the  day; 
but  the  personage  of  the  great  heiress  does 
not  appear  till  she  comes  on  the  scene  as  a 
married  woman  in  Can  You  Forgive  Herf 
He  is  the  nephew  and  heir  to  a  Duke — the 
Duke  of  Omnium — who  was  first  introduced 
In  Doctor  Thorne  and  afterwards  in  Framley 
Parsonage. — Trollope:    Autobiography. 

PambO}  poem  by  Browning  in 
volume,  Jocoseria  (1883).  Pambo 
asking  of  a  learned  man  how  he  was 
to  acquire  wisdom  was  referred  to  the 
39th  Psalm,  I  St  verse,  "  I  said,  I  will 
take  heed  to  my  ways,  that  I  sin 
not  with  my  tongue."  He  was  struck 
dumb  by  the  greatness  as  well  as  the 
simplicity  of  the  lesson  and  went  his 
way  to  practise  it.  When  last  heard 
from  he  was  still  grappling  with  the 
initiatory  lesson  of  wisdom. 

Pamela,  titular  heroine  and  title 
of  a  novel  by  Samuel  Richardson 
(1741).  The  full  title  is  Pamela;  or 
Virtue  Rewarded.  In  a  Series  of 
Letters  from  a  Beautiful  Young 
Damsel  taker  Parents.  Published  in 
order  to  cultivate  the  principles  of 
Virtue  and  Religion  in  the  minds  of 
the  youth  of  both  sexes.  Richardson 
was  indebted  for  the  incidents  of  the 
story  to  some  circiunstances  in  real 
life  which  were  related  to  him  while 
visiting  in  the  country. 

Pamela,  the  daughter  of  a  small 
farmer  and  a  pretty  and  ladylike  girl 
of  seventeen  or  eighteen,  is  waiting- 
maid  and  half  companion  to  a  dowager 
lady  of  great  fortune  in  Bedfordshire, 
and,  as  a  matter  of  course,  inspires  her 
son,  who  is  only  named  as  Mr.  B.,  with 
a  dishonorable  passion.  The  gentle- 
man does  little  or  nothing  towards  the 
accomplishment  of  his  purpose  till  his 
mother's  death,  and  even  then  is  held 
back  for  some  time  by  a  grave  doubt 
whether  Pamela's  station  in  society 
is  good  enough  to  qualify  her  for  his 
mistress.  This  painful  scruple  being 
at  length  overcome,  he  proceeds  to 
pay  court  to  her  in  the  usual  way, 
as  one  accustomed  to  conquest,  and 
not  dreaming  of  resistance.  To  his 
surprise  he  is  rebuffed  and  he  then 
tries  the  effect  of  regular  proposals, 
a  handsome  allowance  for  herself,  and 
all  manner  of  good  things  for  her 
19 


parents.  These  likewise  being  re- 
jected, he  is  driven  to  have  recourse 
to  abduction,  but  is  once  more  baffled 
and  as  a  last  resort  offers  her  his 
hand  and  fortime,  which  are  joyously 
accepted. 

Panchine,  in  Ivan  Tourgenief's 
novel,  Lizay  or  a  Nest  of  Nobles,  the 
typical  representative  of  that  class  of 
Russians  whom  scratching  is  sup- 
posed to  metamorphose  into  Tartars. 
Panchine  is  all  lacquer  and  gilding. 
He  possesses  many  accomplishments, 
occupies  himself  with  literature  and 
art,  and  can  express  on  occasion  the 
most  liberal  and  philanthropic  senti- 
ments. But  his  real  nature  is  dull, 
cunning,  and  selfish.  He  has  pro- 
vided himself  with  a  stock  of  Western 
ideas,  just  as  a  Turkish  pasha  orders 
steam-engines  and  power-looms,  and 
to  equal  purpose.  The  ideas  and 
accomplislunents  are  laid  one  by  one 
on  the  shelf,  and  Panchine  becomes 
an  ordinary  Russian  official. 

Pancrace,  Doctor,  in  Moli^re's 
Forced  Marriage,  a  pedantic  philos- 
opher who  applies  the  logical  method 
of  Aristotle  to  the  most  trivial  acts 
and  occurrences  and  convinces  him- 
self of  the  truth  of  absurdities. 

Pandarus,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy 
of  Troilus  and  Cressida  (1609)  and  in 
Chaucer's  poem  (1380)  similarly 
entitled, — a  go-between  or  proctu*er, 
the  uncle  of  the  lascivious  Cressida. 
There  is  a  hero  of  this  name  in  the 
Iliad  and  another  in  the  ^neid,  but 
neither  has  any  connection  with  the 
more  modem  figure,  which  seems  to 
have  been  invented  by  Boccaccio  and 
inserted  by  him  into  the  story  of 
Cressida's  loves. 

His  name,  shortened  to  Pandar,  has 
passed  into  the  English  language  as 
the  synonym  for  a  procurer.  Accord- 
ing to  Shakespeare  he  invoked  this 
future  curse  upon  his  own  head.  In 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  iii,  ii,  200,  he 
says  to  the  eponymic  hero  and  hero- 
ine, "  If  ever  you  prove  false  one  to 
another,  since  I  have  taken  such  pains 
to  bring  you  together,  let  all  pitiful 
goers-bet  ween  be  called  to  the  world's 
end  after  my  name,  call  them  all 
Pandars;   let  all   constant   men   be 


Pandosto 


290 


Pantagniel 


Troiluses;  all  false  women  Cressidas 
and  all  brokers-between  Pandarsi 
Say  Amen." 

Pandosto,  hero  of  a  prose  pastoral, 
Pandosto  the  Triumph  of  Time  (1588) , 
which  Robert  Greene  based  upon  a 
Polish  tale.  The  subtitle,  The  History 
of  Dorastus  and  Fawnia,  superseded 
the  original  title  in  later  editions.  Its 
chief  interest  to-day  lies  in  the  fact 
that  Shakespeare  drew  from  it  the 
materials  of  A  Winter's  Tale  (161 1). 
Pandosto  is  Leontes,  Dorastus  is 
Florizel  and  Fawnia  Perdita.  In 
Greene's  story  Pandosto  falls  in  love 
with  his  own  daughter,  not  knowing 
her  to  be  such,  and  is  finally  seized  by 
a  fit  of  melancholy  madness  in  which 
he  slays  himself. 

Pangloss,  Dr.,  in  Voltaire's  satirical 
novel,  Candide  (1759),  a  professional 
optimist,  tutor  to  the  hero. 

Dr.  Pangloss  proved  admirably  that  there 
is  no  effect  without  a  cause,  and  that  In 
this  best  of  possible  worlds,  the  castle  of 
the  baron  was  the  most  beautiful  of  castles, 
and  the  baroness  the  best  of  possible  baron- 
esses. It  is  demonstrated,  he  would  say, 
that  things  cannot  be  other  than  they  are; 
for  as  everything  was  made  for  one  end, 
everything  is  necessarily  for  the  best  end. 
Remark  well  that  the  nose  is  formed  to 
wear  spectacles;  so  we  have  spectacles.  The 
legs  were  obviously  instituted  to  be  breeched 
and  we  have  breeches.  Pigs  were  made  to 
be  eaten;  we  eat  pork  all  the  year.  Hence, 
those  who  have  asserted  that  all  is  well 
uttered  folly;  we  must  maintain  that  all 
is  best. — James  Parton:  Life  of  Voltaire, 
vol.  ii,  p.  212. 

Pangloss,  Dr.  Peter,  in  The  Heir- 
at-Law  (1797),  a  comedy  by  Colman 
the  Younger,  a  poor,  but  mercenary 
pedant,  who  pompously  describes 
himself  as  "  an  LL.D.and  an  A.S.S.," 
and  is  delighted  to  be  raised  from  the 
condition  of  a  muffin-maker  in  Milk 
Alley  to  that  of  tutor  to  Dick  Dowlas 
at  ;^300  a  year.  He  is  fond  of  big 
words  and  of  quotations;  to  the  latter 
he  always  appends  full  credit,  as 
"  Lend  me  your  ears — Shakespeare, 
hem!  " 

To  the  character  of  Dr.  Pangloss  The 
Heir-at-Law  no  doubt  owes  the  chief  por- 
tion of  the  vitality  it  still  enjoys;  so  lively 
and  vigorous  a  caricature  in  the  hands 
of  a  competent  Interpreter  could  scarcely 
fail  to  afford  very  hearty  amusement. 
Whether  the  character  ever  possessed  any  ' 


distinct  foundation  in  nature  cannot  now 
be  discovered.  The  Doctor's  appellation 
is  derived,  of  course,  from  Voltaire's 
Candide  and  the  character  has  been 
plausibly  traced  to  Fortune  in  her  Wits, 
an  unacted  comedy  by  Charles  Johnson, 
published  in  1705,  and  translated  from 
Cowley's  Latin  play  of  Naufragium  Jocu- 
lare.  In  this  work  appears  a  pedantic 
tutor,  called  Sententious  Gerund,  who 
travels  to  Dunkirk  with  his  pupils.  Grim  and 
Shallow,  and  indulges  in  quotations  from 
classic  authors  and  the  poets,  very  much 
after  the  manner  of  Colman's  Pangloss. 
Although  well  known  to  be  a  student  of 
old  plays,  it  is  still  quite  possible  that  Col- 
man was  unacquainted  with  Johnson's 
comedy  or  its  original,  and  that  Pangloss 
Is  to  be  accounted  as  a  wholly  independent 
creation. 

Panjandnim,  The  Great.  A  name 
sometimes  used,  like  the  American 
**  Great  Muck-a-Muck,"  to  charac- 
terize a  boaster,  a  poseur,  a  person 
inflated  with  his  own  imaginary  im- 
portance. The  term  seems  to  have 
been  invented  by  Samuel  Foote, 
dramatist  and  comedian,  in  a  farrago 
of  nonsense  written  down  to  test  the 
memory  of  old  Mackein  who  claimed 
that  he  could  learn  anything  by  heart 
on  hearing  it  once:  "  So  she  went 
into  a  garden  to  cut  a  cabbage-leaf 
to  make  an  apple-pie;  and  at  the 
same  time,  a  great  she-bear  coming 
up  the  street  pops  his  head  into  the 
shop — ^What!  no  soap?  So  he  died 
and  she  very  imprudently  married 
the  barber;  and  there  were  present 
the  Picninnies  and  the  Joblilies  and 
the  GaraHlies  and  the  Great  Panjan- 
drum himself.  And  they  all  fell  to 
pla5ring  the  game  of  catch-as-catch- 
can,  till  the  gunpowder  ran  out  at  the 
heels  of  their  boots." 

Pantagruel,  hero  of  Parts  ii-v  of 
Rabelais's  Chronicles  of  Gargantua. 
He  is  the  worthy  son  of  the  famous 
giant,  though  of  lesser  stature, — an 
epicurean  philosopher,  fond  of  guz- 
zling, gorging  and  gormandizing,  a 
jolly  host,  a  responsive  guest,  an 
exhilarating  companion,  rising  buoy- 
antly above  all  the  ills  of  life.  Some 
commentators  have  seen  in  him  a 
personification  of  Henry  II,  and  his 
inappeasable  appetite,  devouring  the 
substance  of  the  masses,  suggests  an 
allegory  of  royalty.  With  his  insep- 
arable companion  Panurge,  he  starts 


Panurpe 


291 


ParoUes 


in  search  of  the  Oracle  of  the  Dive- 
Bouteille  (see  Holy  Bottle)  and 
meets  extraordinary  adventures  on 
the  way. 

Panurge,  the  inseparable  com- 
panion of  Pantagniel  in  Rabelais 's 
Chronicles  of  Gargantua,  Parts  ii-v. 
A  jovial,  hard-drinking,  bottle-nosed, 
pimply-faced,  fatsided  glutton,  laugh- 
ing at  everything  save  fear,  for  he  is 
an  arrant  coward,  a  man  of  great  wit 
and  intelligence,  but  well-nigh  bereft 
of  morality, — a  drunkard,  a  profli- 
gate, a  spendthrift  and  a  trickster — 
he  is  the  most  puzzling  character  in 
all  Rabelais.  In  Book  iii  he  determines 
to  marry,  a  determination  which  leads 
him  to  ^  consult  a^  vast  number  of 
authorities,  each  giving  occasion  for 
satire  of ^  a  more  or  less  complicated 
sort.  Finally  it  is  decided  that  with 
Pantagruel  and  Friar  John  he  shall 
sail  to  consult  the  oracle  of  the  Dive- 
Bouteille.   See  Holy  Bottle. 

Panza,  Sancho  of  Adzpetia,  in  Cer- 
vantes's  Don  Quixote  (1605), squire  to 
the  titular  hero,  whose  shrewdness, 
homely  common  sense  and  coarse 
and  vulgar  wit  form  an  excellent  foil 
to  the  other's  crack-brained  idealism. 
"  A  little  squat  fellow  with  a  tun 
belly  and  spindle  shanks  "  (Part  i, 
ii,  i),  he  rides  an  ass  called  Dapple, 
is  fond  of  the  gross  pleasures  of  the 
table,  and  is  always  pat  and  pertinent 
in  his  use  of  racy  proverbs. 

At  first  he  is  introduced  as  the  opposite 
of  Don  Quixote,  and  used  merely  to  bring 
out  his  master's  peculiarities  in  a  more  strik- 
ing relief.  It  is  not  until  we  have  gone 
through  nearly  half  of  the  First  Part  that 
he  utters  one  of  those  proverbs  which  form 
afterwards  the  staple  of  his  conversation  and 
humor,  and  it  is  not  till  the  opening  of  the 
Second  Part,  and  indeed,  not  till  he  comes 
forth  in  all  his  mingled  shrewdness  and 
credulity  as  the  governor  of  Barataria,  that 
his  character  is  quite  developed .  and  com- 
pleted to  the  full  measure  of  its  grotesque,  yet 
congruous,  proportions. — Ticknor:  Span- 
ish Literature,  ii,  146. 

Paracelsus,    Philippus    Aureolus, 

who  was  originally  Theophrastus 
Bombastus  von  Hohenhedm,  a  famous 
German-Swiss  physician  and  alchem- 
ist (1493- 1 541).  A  strange  mixture 
of  charlatanism  and  really  advanced 
views  in  science,  he  was  popularly 


believed  to  keep  a  familiar  or  small 
demon  in  the  hilt  of  his  sword. 
Browning  has  made  him  the  hero  of 
a  philosophic  and  narrative  poem 
entitled  Paracelsus  (1835).  At  the 
age  of  twenty  he  thinks  that  knowl- 
edge is  the  summum  bonum  or  greatest 
good  of  human  Ufe.  His  friends 
Festus  and  Michal  advise  him  to 
retire  to  a  seat  of  learning,  but  he 
emerges  at  the  expiration  of  eight 
years  entirely  disillusionized.  Falling 
in  with  Aprile,  a  young  and  enthusi- 
astic poet,  he  alters  his  creed  and 
determines  to  seek  the  summum 
bonum  in  love.  Again  he  is  disap- 
pointed and  he  finally  decides  to  drop 
his  ideals  and  make  the  material 
world  yield  up  to  him  such  enjoyment 
as  it  possesses. 

Paris,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy, 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  a  suitor  for  Juliet 
who  is  commanded  by  her  parents  to 
accept  him.  Romeo  (Actv,  3)  kills 
him  at  Juliet's  grave. 

Parisina,  in  Byron's  poem  of  that 
name  (18 16),  the  wife  of  Azo,  chief 
of  Ferrara.  Betrothed  to  Hugo,  an 
illegitimate  son  of  Azo  before  her 
marriage  and  still  loving  him  after- 
wards, the  lovers  now  found  freer 
scope  for  indulging  their  passion. 
One  night  Azo  woke  to  overhear  his 
wife  confess  her  guilt  while  asleep. 
He  had  his  son  beheaded  and,  though 
he  spared  Parisina's  life  for  the  nonce, 
no  one  ever  knew  her  subsequent  fate. 
B5n*on  foimded  his  poem  on  an  inci- 
dent recorded  in  Gibbon's  Antiquities 
of  ihe^  House  of  Brunswick. 

Trizzi,  in  his  History  of  Ferrara, 
gives  a  different  and  more  authentic 
story;  Niccolo  III  of  Ferrara  (the 
historic  name)  married  for  the  second 
time  Parisina  Malatesta.  Because 
she  detested  his  bastard,  Niccolo  sent 
Ugo  to  escort  Parisina  on  a  journey. 
Love  succeeded  to  aversion,  the 
secret  of  the  guilty  pair  was  betrayed 
by  a  servant  and  both  were  beheaded. 

ParoUes.  in  AWs  Well  that  Ends 
WeU  (1598),  a  fcdlower  of  Bertram,  a 
braggart  and  a  coward: 

I  know  him  a  notorious  liar. 
Think  him  a  great  way  fool,  solely  a  coward. 
I.  i.  III. 


Partingtoii 


292 


Pastorius 


ParoUes,  the  vilest  and  basest  character, 
although  not  the  most  wickedly  malicious, 
that  Shakespeare  wrought. — R.  G.  White. 

The  comic  part  of  the  play  turns  on  the 
folly,  boasting,  and  cowardice  of  ParoUes,  a 
parasite  and  hanger-on  of  Bertram's,  the 
detection  of  whose  false  pretensions  to 
bravery  and  honour  forms  a  very  amusing 
episode.  He  is  first  found  out  by  the  old 
lord  Lafeu,  who  says,  "The  soul  of  this  man 
is  in  his  clothes  ";  and  it  is  proved  afterwards 
that  his  heart  is  in  his  tongue,  and  that  both 
are  false  and  hollow.  The  adventure  of  "the 
bringing  off  of  his  drum"  has  become  pro- 
verbial as  a  satire  on  all  ridiculous  and  blus- 
tering undertakings  which  the  person  never 
means  to  perform. — Hazlixt:  Characters  of 
Shakespeare's  Plays. 

Partington,  Mrs.,  a  famous  char- 
acter invented  by  Sydney  Smith  in  a 
speech  made  at  Taunton  in  1831, 
ridiculing  the  rejection  of  the  Reform 
Bill  by  the  House  of  Lords:  "  I  do 
not  mean  to  be  disrespectful,  but  the 
attempt  of  the  lords  to  stop  the 
progress  of  reform  reminds  me  very 
forcibly  of  the  great  storm  of  Sid- 
mouth,  and  the  conduct  of  the  excel- 
lent Mrs.  Partington  on  that  occasion. 
In  the  winter  of  1824,  there  set  in  a 
great  flood  upon  that  town;  the  tide 
rose  to  an  incredible  height,  the  waves 
rushed  in  upon  the  houses,  and  every- 
thing was  threatened  with  destruc- 
tion. In  the  midst  of  this  sublime 
storm,  Dame  Partington,  who  lived 
upon  the  beach,  was  seen  at  the  door 
of  her  house  with  mop  and  patterns, 
trundling  her  mop,  and  squeezing 
out  the  sea-water,  and  vigorously 
pushing  away  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 
The  Atlantic  was  roused,  Mrs.  Part- 
ington's spirit  was  up;  but  I  need  not 
tell  you  that  the  contest  was  unequal. 
The  Atlantic  Ocean  beat  Mrs.  Part- 
ington. She  was  excellent  at  a  slop 
or  a  puddle,  but  she  should  not  have 
meddled  with  a  tempest." 

Attempts  have  been  made  to  prove 
that  there  was  really  a  Mrs.  Parting- 
ton, living  as  stated  on  the  beach  at 
Sidmouth,  Devonshire,  England,  who 
engaged  in  vigorous  contest  with  the 
incoming  flood  during  the  storm  of 
November,  1824. 

In  truth,  Sydney  never  had  the  weakness 
of  looking  too  closely  to  see  what  the 
enemy's  advocate  is  going  to  say.  Take 
even  the  famous,  the  immortal  apologue  of 


Mrs.  Partington.  It  covered,  we  are  usually 
told,  the  Upper  House  with  ridicule,  and 
did  as  much  as  anything  else  to  carry  the 
Reform  bill.  And  yet,  though  it  is  a  watery 
apologue,  it  will  not  hold  water  for  a  moment. 
The  implied  conclusion  is,  that  the  Atlantic 
beat  Mrs.  Partington.  Did  it?  It  made,  no 
doubt,  a  great  mess  in  her  house,  it  put  her 
to  flight,  it  put  her  to  shame.  But  when  I 
was  last  at  Sidmouth  the  line  of  high-water 
mark  was,  I  believe,  much  what  it  was  be- 
fore the  great  storm  of  1824,  and  though  the 
Particular  Mrs.  Partington  had,  no  doubt, 
een  gathered  to  her  fathers,  the  Mrs. 
Partington  of  the  day  was,  equally  without 
doubt,  living  very  comfortably  in  the  house 
which  the  Atlantic  had  threatened  to 
swallow  up. — Georgb  Saintsbury. 

Partington,  Mrs.  Ruth,  an  eccentric 
creation  of  the  American  humorist 
B.  P.  Shillaber.  Her  name  was  evi- 
dently a  reminiscence  of  Sydney 
Smith's  invention,  but  in  her  mis- 
taken use  of  big  words  and  her  nice 
derangement  of  epitaphs,  she  estab- 
lishes a  clear  line  of  descent  from 
Sheridan's  Mrs.  Malaprop,  Hook's 
Winifred  Jenkins  and  Smollett's 
Tabitha  Bramble. 

Partridge,  in  Fielding's  Tom  Jones, 
the  devoted  companion  of  the  hero 
in  all  his  wanderings  after  leaving 
Squire  Al worthy's  house.  Timid, 
simple-minded,  blundering  and  eccen- 
tric, he  manages  to  involve  himself 
and  his  master  in  all  sorts  of  misad- 
ventures. But  he  has  a  good  heart 
and  a  semi-cultivated  brain,  stored 
as  it  is  with  odds  and  ends  of  classical 
literature.  Before  throwing  in  his 
lot  with  Jones  he  had  been  the  village 
schoolmaster  and  later  a  barber  under 
the  alias  of  Mr.  Benjamin.  It  may 
be  presumed,  therefore,  that  the 
latter  was  his  Christian  name. 

Passepartout,  in  Jules  Verne's 
romance.  Round  the  World  in  Eighty 
Days,  the  French  valet  of  Phileas 
Fogg,  who  had  saved  him  from  mur- 
der by  a  Chinese  mob. 

Pastorius,  Daniel,  hero  of  J.  G. 
Whittier's  poem.  The  Pennsylvania 
Pilgrim  (1872),  was  a  real  character, 
a  young  German  scholar  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  who,  turning  Quaker, 
came  to  the  new  land  of  Penn  and 
helped  to  found  Germantown,  a 
suburb  of  Philadelphia.  Here  he 
married  and  lived  a  long,  calm,  useful 
life,    tilling   the   soil,    reading   good 


Patelin 


293 


Peachum 


books,  corresponding  with  savants 
and  sought  alike  by  the  neighboring 
Indians  and  by  such  gentle  enthusiasts 
as  wandered  into  that  haven  of  peace. 

Patelin,  hero  of  an  ancient  French 
farce  by  P.  Blanchet,  U Avocat  Pate- 
lin, Lawyer  Patelin.  Full  of  flattery 
and  insinuating  ways,  he  contrives  to 
obtain  on  credit,  from  William  Jos- 
seaimie,  six  ells  of  cloth,  by  artfully 
praising  the  tradesman's  father.  To 
him  is  credited  the  proverbial  expres- 
sion, 'Revenons  a  nos  moutons,  "  let 
us  return  to  our  sheep,"  or  "to  our 
muttons,"  as  English  humor  will 
sometimes  insist  on  translating  it. 

Patteme,  Sir  Willoughby  (the  name 
may  have  some  punning  allusion  to 
the  willow  pattern,  once  famous  in 
china  ware),  the  titular  hero  of  George 
Meredith's  novel.  The  Egoist. 

Living  entirely  in  and  for  himself, 
the  views  he  takes  of  that  self  and  of 
the  duties  of  his  position  in  society 
are  all  based  on  pride  and  conceit.  As 
Providence  has  made  him  the  greatest 
magnate  in  the  county,  it  is  not  for 
him  to  frustrate  the  divine  intentions, 
by  cultivating  the  acquaintance  of 
those  who  are  his  equals  or  possibly, 
his  superiors.  Being  only  a  baronet, 
he  mistrusts  the  peerage.  ^  London 
he  feels  to  be  the  destruction  of  all 
individuality.  Patteme  Hall  alone 
gives  him  room  and  verge  enough  for 
the  proper  display  of  his  talents. 
There  he  is  in  his  element,  worshipped 
by  the  countryside  in  general  and  by 
Laetitia  Dale  {q.v.)  in  particular. 

The  Egoist  is  a  satire,  so  much  must  be 
allowed,  but  it  Is  a  satire  of  a  singular  qual- 
ity, which  tells  you  nothing  of  that  obvious 
mote  which  is  engaged  from  first  to  last 
with  that  Invisible  beam.  It  is  yourself 
that  Is  hunted  down,  these  are  your  faults 
that  are  dragged  into  the  day  and  numbered, 
with  lingering  relish,  with  cruel  cunning  and 
precision.  A  young  friend  of  Mr.  Meredith's 
(as  I  have  the  story)  came  to  him  In  agony. 
"This  is  too  bad  of  you,"  he  cried.  "Wil- 
loughby is  me!"  [sic!]  "No,  my  dear  fel- 
low," said  the  author,  "it  is  all  of  us."  I 
have  read  The  Egoist  five  or  six  times  and 
I  mean  to  read  it  again;  for  I  am  like  the 
young  friend  of  the  anecdote — I  think 
Willoughby  an  unmanly  but  a  very  service- 
able exposure  of  myself. — R.  L.  Stevenson. 


Pattieson,  Mr,  Peter,  in  the  intro- 
duction to  Scott's  Heart  of  Midlothian 


and  again  in  the  introduction  to  The 
Bride  of  Lammermoor,  is  feigned  to 
be  an  assistant  teacher  at  Glander- 
cleugh,  where  he  wrote  The  Tales  of 
My  Landlord,  published  after  his 
death  by  Jedediah  Cleishbotham. 

Paul,  hero  of  a  romantic  idyl,  Paul 
and  Virginia  (1788),  by  Bemardin 
de  St.  Pierre,  the  illegitimate  son  of 
one  Margaret,  who  has  retired  to  hide 
her  shame  in  Port  Louis,  in  the 
Mauritius.  In  childhood  he  is  the 
playmate,  in  early  manhood  he  be- 
comes the  ardent  and  respectful  lover, 
of  Virginia  {q.v.),  his  nearest  neigh- 
bor, the  daughter  of  an  aristocratic 
French  widow,  Madame  de  la  Tour. 

Paulina,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
A  Winter* s  Tale,  a  loud  and  voluble 
champion  of  Queen  Hermione  against 
the  jealous  king. 

Paulina,  nee  Home,  who  becomes 
the  Countess  de  Bassompierre  and 
eventually  marries  "  Dr.  John " 
(Graham  Bretton),  is  a  dainty,  ideal 
creature,  "  an  airy  fairy  thing,"  in 
Charlotte  Bronte's  novel,  Villette. 
She  is  sketched  from  infancy  to 
womanhood. 

"  I  felt  that  this  character  lacked 
substance,"  said  Miss  Bronte,  herself; 
**  I  fear  the  reader  will  feel  the  same." 

Pauline,  in  Bulwer-Lytton's  com- 
edy, The  Lady  of  Lyons  (1838), 
the  daughter  of  a  wealthy  merchant, 
M.  Deschappelles,  who  marries 
Claude  Melnotte.    See  Melnotte. 

Pauline,  heroine  of  a  narrative 
poem  by  Robert  Browning. 

It  Is  the  half -delirious  self-revealing  of  a 
soul  maddened  bv  continued  introspection, 
by  the  irrepressible  craving  to  extend  its 
sphere  of  consciousness,  and  by  the  mon- 
strosities of  subjective  experience  in  which 
this  self-magnifying  and  self-distorting 
action  has  involved  it.  The  sufferer  tells 
his  story  to  a  woman  who  loves  him,  and 
to  whom  he  has  been  always  more  or  less 
worthily  attached;  and  ends  by  gently 
raving  himself  into  a  rest  which  is  repre- 
sented as  premonitory  of  death,  and  in 
which  the  image  of  a  perfect  human  love 
rises  amidst  the  tumult  of  the  disordered 
brain,  transfusing  its  chaotic  emotions  into 
one  soft  harmony  of  life  and  hope. — Con- 
temporary Review. 

Peachum,  in  The  Beggar's  Opera 
(1728),  by  John  Gay,  the  ostensibly 
respectable  patron  of  Captain  Mac- 


Peachum 


294 


Pecksniff 


heath  and  his  gang  of  highwaymen, 
who  is  really  a  pimp  and  a  fence. 
Though  eloquently  indignant  when 
his  honor  is  impeached  he  betrays 
his  confederates  when  it  suits  his 
purposes  and  his  pocket.  In  all  his 
crookedness  he  enjoys  the  moral 
support  of  his  wife,  but  the  pair  shock 
and  aUenate  their  daughter  Polly. 

Peachum,  Polly,  the  daughter  of 
Peachimi  and  bride  of  Captain  Mac- 
heath.  She  is  represented  as  pre- 
serving her  purity  unsullied  among 
evil  surroundings,  refusing  even  the 
compromise  suggested  by  her  Machia- 
vellian mother  to  be  "  somewhat 
nice  in  her  deviations  from  virtue," 
Polly's  constancy  to  Macheath,  de- 
spite his  multitudinous  divagations 
after  other  ''charmers,"  wins  his 
tardy  recognition  in  the  last  act. 
The  part  of  Polly  was  a  favorite  with 
pretty  actresses  of  good  voices,  no 
less  than  three  of  whom  sang  their 
way  direct  from  the  stage  to  the 
peerage. 

It  was  Polly  as  impersonated  by  the  fas- 
cinating Lavinia  Fenton  (in  1728)  that  made 
the  success  of  The  Beggar's  Opera.  She 
dressed  the  part  in  the  most  simple  manner, 
and  the  pathetic  narv6t6  with  which  she 
deUvered  the  Unes — 

"  For  on  the  rope  that  hangs  my  dear 
Depends  poor  Polly's  life" — 
had  such  an  effect  that  applause  burst  forth 
from  every  part  of  the  house.  The  work 
had  up  to  this  moment  gone  but  poorly. 
Its  triumph  was  now  assured,  and  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  public  went  on  increasing 
till  the  fall  of  the  curtain. — Henry  Suther- 
land Edwards:    The  Prima  Donna  (1888). 

Pearl,  Little,  in  Hawthorne's  The 
Scarlet  Letter,  the  elfish  result  of 
Arthur  Dimmesdale's  liaison  with 
Hester  Prynne.  She  is  the  torment 
and  the  only  treasure  of  her  mother. 

Peckham,  Silas,  in  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes's  romance,  Elsie  Venner 
(1861),  is  a  hustling  Yankee  peda- 
gogue, who  "  keeps  a  young  lady's 
school  exactly  as  he  would  have  kept 
a  hundred  head  of  cattle — -for  the 
simple  unadorned  purpose  of  mak- 
ing just  as  much  money  in  just  as 
few  years  as  can  be  safely  done." 
He  finds  a  notable  assistant  in  Mrs. 
Peckham,  an  honest,  ignorant  woman, 
"who   could   not    have    passed   an 


examination  in  the  youngest  class," 
but  who  without  a  qualm  looks  after 
"the  feathering,  cackling,  roosting, 
rising  and  general  behaviour  of  these 
hundred  chicks.'' 

Pecksniff,  Seth,  in  Dickens's  novel, 
Martin  Chuzzlewit,  a  consummate 
humbug  and  hypocrite,  ostensibly  an 
architect  and  land-surveyor,  "  though 
he  never  designed  or  built  anjrthing 
and  his  surveying  was  limited  to  the 
extensive  prospect  from  the  windows 
of  his  house."  In  conversation  and 
correspondence  he  exudes  morality. 
He  is  fuller  of  virtuous  precept  than 
a  copybook.  "  Some  people  likened 
him  to  a  direction  post  which  is 
always  telling  the  way  to  a  place  and 
never  goes  there;  but  these  were  his 
enemies,  the  shadows  cast  by  his 
brightness,  that  was  all."  His  person 
is  sleek,  his  manner  soft  and  oily. 
Ultimately  he  is  exposed  and  degen- 
erates into  "  a  drunken,  begging, 
squalid,  letter- writing  man."  He  has 
two  daughters,  Mercy  and  Charity, 
known  respectively  as  Merry  and 
Cherry, — the  first  marries  Jonas 
Chuzzlewit  and  becomes  deeply  peni- 
tent, the  second  cherishes  for  life  the 
feeling  that  she  is  a  victim  of  mis- 
placed confidence  in  having  been 
deserted  at  the  altar  by  Mr.  Augustus 
Moddle.  Samuel  Carter  Hall  was 
generally  looked  upon  as  the  original 
of  Pecksniff. 

With  him  was  often  seen  the  egregious  Mr. 
Pecksniff  (as  Samuel  Carter  Hall  was  com- 
monly known  to  his  acquaintances  since  the 
publication  of  Martin  Chuzzlewit  ten  years 
before).  Hall  was  a  genuine  comedy  figure. 
Such  oily  and  voluble  sanctimoniousness 
needed  no  modification  to  be  fitted  to  appear 
before  the  footlights  in  satirical  drama. 
He  might  be  called  an  ingenuous  hypocrite, 
an  artless  humbug,  a  veracious  liar,  so 
obviously  were  the  traits  indicated  innate 
and  organic  in  him  rather  than  acquired 
Dickens,  after  all,  missed  some  of  the  finer 
shades  of  the  character;  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  Hall  was  in  his  own  private 
contemplation  as  shining  an  object  of  moral 
perfection  as  he  portrayed  himself  before 
others.  His  perversity  was  of  the  spirit, 
not  of  the  letter,  and  thus  escaped  his  own 
recognition.  His  indecency  and  falsehood 
were  in  his  soul,  but  not  in  his  consciousness; 
so  that  he  paraded  them  at  the  very  moment 
that  he  was  claiming  for  himself  all  that 
was  their  opposite.  No  one  who  knew  him 
took  him  seriously,  but  admired  the  ability 
of  his  performance,  and  so  well  was  he  under- 


J 


Pedlington 


295 


Peggotty 


stood  that  he  did  little  or  no  harm  beyond 
the  venting  of  a  spite  here  and  there  and 
the  boring  of  his  auditors  after  the  absurdity 
of  him  bejcame  tedious. — Julian  Haw- 
thorns in  Hawthorne  and  his  Circle. 


Pedlington,  Little,  an  imaginary 
English  village,  in  John  Poole's  Little 
Pedlington  and  the  Pedlingtonians 
(1839).  Small  as  it  is,  quackery, 
humbug,  cant,  selfishness  and  other 
social  vices  flourish  within  its  bounds. 

Pedro,  Don.  Prince  of  Arragon, 
in  Much  Ado  About  Nothing;  the 
"  villain  "  of  the  play,  who  slanders 
the  fair  heroine. 

Pedro,  Dr.,  in  Cervantes's  Don 
Quixote,  the  more  familiar  name  for 
Dr.  Pedro  Rezio  de  Aguero,  court 
physician  in  the  island  of  Barataria. 
With  a  whalebone  rod  in  his  hand  he 
posts  himself  at  the  dinner  table  to 
Hmit  the  diet  of  Sancho  Panza,  newly 
elected  governor  of  the  island,  within 
proper  hygienic  limits.  Partridges 
are  "forbidden  by  Hippocrates,"  olla 
podridas  are  "  most  pernicious," 
rabbits  are  "a  sharp-haired  diet.'* 
These  are  accordingly  whisked  off 
the  table.  "  A  few  wafers  and  a  thin 
slice  or  two  of  quince  "  are  recom- 
mended by  the  doctor  and  sniffed  at 
by  Sancho.  Finally  the  latter  is 
suffered  to  fall  to  upon  a  dish  of  beef 
hashed  with  onions.  He  is  quite  con- 
tent: "Look  you,  signer  doctor,"  he 
says,  "  I  want  no  dainties,  for  I  have 
always  been  used  to  beef,  bacon,  pork, 
turnips  and  onions"  (11,  iii,  10). 

Peebles,  Peter,  in  Scott's  novel, 
Redgauntlet,  a  vain,  litigious,  arro- 
gant, hard-headed  and  hard-hearted 
Scotchman,  the  plaintiff  in  the  famous 
case  of  Peebles  against  Plainstanes, 
which  for  fifteen  years  had  dragged 
its  slow  length  from  court  to  court 
until  it  had  reached  the  British  par- 
liament. Peter  meanwhile  had  made 
shipwreck  of  fortune,  character  and 
understanding  and  become  "  the  old 
scarecrow  of  Parliament  House,"  a 
liar,  a  drunkard  and  a  pauper,  but 
still  glorying  in  his  fancied  eminence 
as  a  suitor  in  the  law  courts. 

Peeping  Tom,  a  comparatively 
recent  interpolation  into  the  legend 
of  LadyGodiva  (q.v.).    When  that 


lady  announced  that  she  would  ride 
naked  through  the  town  of  Coventry 
at  noon  on  a  certain  day  she  requested 
that  all  citizens  should  remain  at 
home  with  their  doors  and  windows 
shut.      ,j 

Then  she  rode  back  clothed  on  with  chastity, 
And  one  low  churl,  compact  of  thankless 

earth. 
The  fatal  byword  of  all  years  to  come. 
Boring  a  little  auger-hole  in  fear, 
Peeped — but  his  eyes  before  they  had  their 

will. 
Were  shrivelled  into  darkness  in  his  head 
And  dropt  before  him. 

Tennyson:    Lady  Godiva. 

Peerybingle,  John,  and  his  wife, 
Mary,  known  as  "  Dot,"  an  humble, 
but  kindly  and  devoted  couple  in 
Dickens's  Cricket  on  the  Hearth 
(1845).    See  Slowboy,  Tillie. 

Peg,  in  Arbuthnot's  satirical  His- 
tory of  John  Bull,  is  intended  to 
personify  the  Church  and  State  of 
Scotland.  "  Peg  had,  indeed,  some 
odd  humours  and  comical,  for  which 
John  would  jeer  her.  '  What  think 
you  of  my  sister  Peg,'  says  he,  'that 
faints  at  the  soimd  of  an  organ,  and 
yet  will  dance  and  frisk  at  the  noise 
of  a  bagpipe?  *  Lord  Peter  [the  Pope] 
she  detested;  nor  did  Martin  Luther 
stand  much  better  in  her  good  graces; 
but  Jack  [Calvin]  had  found  the  way 
to  her  heart." 

Peg  of  Limavaddy,  title  and  heroine 
of  a  ballad  by  WiUiam  Makepeace 
Thackeray. 

Peggotty,  Clara,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield,  the  homely  but  kindly 
nurse  of  David  in  childhood  and  his 
friend  through  life.  She  is  generally 
believed  to  have  been  founded  on 
Dickens's  own  nurse,  Mary  Weller. 
She  marries  Barkis  after  a  peculiar 
courtship. 

Peggotty,  Daniel,  brother  to  Clara 
(g.v.),  fisherman  and  dealer  in  shell- 
fish, a  hearty  whole-souled  bachelor 
of  a  primitive  simplicity,  living  at 
Yarmouth  in  a  house  constructed  out 
of  a  tumed-up  boat,  with  his  nephew 
Ham,  his  niece  Emily,  and  Mrs. 
Gummidge.  Ham  turns  out  as 
sturdy,  staunch  and  simple  as  himself. 
Emily  grows  up  into  a  beautiful  girl, 
is  engaged  to  her  cousin  Ham,  but 


Pelham 


296 


Pendennis 


runs  away  with  James  Steerforth. 
Daniel  sets  forth  to  find  her  and  bring 
her  home,  travels,  mostly  afoot,  over 
a  great  part  of  the  continent  and  at 
last  comes  upon  her  traces  in  London. 
Meanwhile  Steerforth  is  wrecked  at 
Yarmouth.  Ham  endeavors  to  rescue 
him  and  both  are  drowned.  Daniel 
Peggotty  with  Mrs.  Gummidge  and 
Emily  emigrates  to  Australia  where 
he  prospers  as  he  deserves. 

Pelham,  the  hero  of  Bulwer- 
Lytton's  novel,  Pelham,  or  The  Ad- 
ventures of  a  Gentleman  (1828).  In 
accordance  with  the  subtitle,  Pelham 
attempts  to  realize  Etherege's  ideal 
of  a  complete  gentleman  as  exempli- 
fied in  the  code  of  Sir  Fopling  Flutter, 
that  a  gentleman  ought  to  dress  well, 
fence  well,  have  a  genius  for  love- 
letters  and  an  agreeable  voice  for  a 
chamber.  Pelham,  however,  alter- 
nates his  round  of  empty  pleasure  by- 
taking  an  active  interest  in  the  politi- 
cal events  of  his  time. 

Pell,  Solomon,  in  Dickens's  Pick- 
wick Papers  (1826),  an  attorney  in 
the  Insolvent  Debtors'  Court,  by 
whose  aid  Tony  Weller  contrives  to 
get  his  son  Sam  imprisoned  in  the 
Fleet  for  debt,  so  that  he  may  be 
near  Mr.  Pickwick  to  wait  upon  him 
and  protect  him. 

Pelleas,  in  Arthurian  legend — as  it 
found  final  shape  in  Mallory's  Morte 
D' Arthur  and  Tennyson's  Idylls  of 
the  King:  Pelleas  and  Ettare  (1870) 
— the  sinless  youth,  who  cherishing  a 
maiden  passion  for  a  maid  and  finding 
her  false,  goes  mad  at  the  discovery 
of  sin.  Tennyson  introduces  him  as 
the  happiest  in  the  happy  throng  at 
the  jousts  at  Carleon.  For  the  lady 
Ettare  has  accepted  his  love  and  she 
is  beautiful  and  as  pure  as  Guinevere 
and  Guinevere  as  pure  as  heaven  and 
every  lady  spotless  and  every  knight 
true  and,  under  God,  the  god-like 
Arthur  niled  the  world.  Soon  Ettare 
changes.  She  wearies  of  his  very 
innocence.  "I  cannot  bide  Sir  Baby !" 
she  cries.  Pelleas,  hard  to  be  unde- 
ceived, trusts  Sir  Gawain  when  that 
gay  knight  ofifers  to  win  back  Ettare's 
love  for  him.  Gawain  proves  un- 
faithful   and    Pelleas    discovers    his 


unfaithfulness  and  the  unworthiness 
of  Ettare. 

Pendennis,  Arthur  (called  Pen  for 
short),  the  hero  of  Thackeray's  novel, 
The  History  of  Pendennis  (1848-50). 
A^  sentimentalist  by  nature  whose 
milk  of  human  kindness  has  been 
curdled  into  a  mild  cynicism  by 
contact  with  bohemian  and  fashion- 
able life,  he  cultivates  "  a  belief 
qualified  with  scorn  in  all  things 
extant."  Emerson  rather  neatly  sums 
up  the^  same  Thackerayan  phi- 
losophy in  the  epigrammatic  phrase 
"  We  must  renounce  ideals  and  accept 
London."  Doubtless  Pendennis  rep- 
resented one  phase  of  Thackeray's 
mind  and  was  consequently  a  favorite 
with  him.  "  Being  entirely  occupied 
with  my  two  new  friends  Mrs. 
Pendennis  and  her  son,  Arthur,"  he 
wrote  to  the  Brookfields,  '*  I  got  up 
very  early  again  this  morning,  and 
was  with  them  for  more  than  two  hours 
before  breakfast.  He  is  a  very  good- 
natured,  generous  young  fellow,  and  I 
begin  to  like  him  considerably.  I  won- 
der if  he  is  interesting  to  me  from 
selfish  reasons,  and  because  I  fancy  we 
resemble  each  other  in  many  parts." 
Pendennis 's  career  was  in  many  re- 
spects reminiscent  of  his  creator's. 

Pendennis,  Major  Arthur,  in 
Thackeray's  novel,  Pendennis  (1848- 
1850),  the  uncle  of  the  hero,  a  major 
retired  on  half  pay  with  ample  leisure 
to  cultivate  the  aristocratic  classes, 
whom  he  worships  with  a  sort  of  sub- 
limated snobbery.  He  is  the  t3rpical 
old  beau,  a  model  of  neatness  and 
external  decorum.  "  Pendennis's 
coat,  his  white  gloves,  his  whiskers, 
his  very  cane  were  perfect  of  their 
kind  as  specimens  of  a  military  man 
en  retraite."  He  knows  everybody 
and  is  rejoiced  when  his  doings  are 
recorded  in  the  fashionable  news. 
"  He'  was  a  very  useful  and  pleasant 
person  in  a  country  house.  He  enter- 
tained the  young  men  with  queer 
little  anecdotes  and  grivoises  stories 
on  their  shooting  parties  or  in  their 
smoking  room,  where  they  laughed  at 
him  and  with  him.  He  was  obse- 
quious with  the  ladies  of  a  morning 
in  the  rooms  dedicated  to  them." 


Pendennis 


297 


Petnichio 


He  has  real  affection  for  his  nephew, 
shows  tact  and  diplomacy  in  rescuing 
him  from  the  Costigans  and  demon- 
strates his  courage  and  fertility  of 
resource  in  getting  the  better  of  his 
recalcitrant  valet,  Morgan. 

Pendennis,  Helen,  in  Thackeray's 
Pendennis,  the  widow  of  a  surgeon, 
John  Pendennis,  and  mother  of 
Arthur,  affectionate  and  over-indul- 
gent to  him,  and  in  all  other  relations 
of  life  kindly  self-sacrificing,  patient 
and  charitable  except  when  her 
maternal  jealousy  is  awakened. 

Penfeatiier,  Lady  Penelope,  in 
Scott's  novel,  SL  Ronan's  Well,  an 
eccentric  lady  of  fashion  who,  being 
cured  of  some  imaginary  complaint  by 
the  waters  of  St.Ronan's  Spring,  brings 
celebrity  to  the  place,  poses  as  its 
tutelary  divinity,  and  attracts  thither 
"  painters  and  poets  and  philosophers 
and  men  of  science,  and  lecturers  and 
foreign  adventurers,"  and  is  not  her- 
self discovered  "to  be  a  fool  unless 
when  she  set  up  for  being  remarkably 
clever." 

Penruddocke,  Nigel,  in  Disraeli's 
Endymion  (1835),  student  friend  of 
the  hero  at  Oxford,  a  type  of  the 
Tractarian  religious  movement,  com- 
pounded of  Cardinal  Manning  and 
Cardinal  Newman.  Like  his  pro- 
totypes Nigel  goes  over  to  Rome  and 
eventually  becomes  a  Cardinal. 

Percy,  Rosamond,  in  Maria  Edge- 
worth's  Pa/ro»age,warm-hearted,  gen- 
erously impulsive,  sprightly,  who 
according  to  Maria's  own  testimony 
resembles  her  creator. 

Perdita,  in  A  Winter's  Tale  (161 1), 
daughter  of  King  Leontes  and  Queen 
Hermione,  of  Sicily,  who  because 
the  father  suspected  the  mother's 
virtue,  was  abandoned  on  the  coast 
of  Bohemia,  was  rescued  by  a  shep- 
herd, who  called  her  Perdita  and 
brought  her  up  in  his  own  ignorance  as 
to  her  origin, — and  was  wooed  and  won 
by  Prince  Florizel  iq.v.),  disguised  for 
the  nonce  as  the  shepherd  Doricles. 
Because  of  the  opposition  of  Florizel's 
father,  King  of  Bohemia,  the  lovers  fled 
to  Sicily  where  the  mystery  of  her  birth 
was  cleared  up  and  the  repentant 
Leontes  accepted  her  as  his  daughter. 


George  IV  when  Prince  of  Wales 
called  himself  Florizel  and  Mrs. 
Robinson,  Perdita,  in  his  lover's  cor- 
respondence with  that  actress. 

Shakespeare  shows  us  more  of  Perdita 
than  of  Miranda,  and  heavenly  as  the 
innocence  of  Miranda  was,  we  yet  feel  thit 
Perdita  comes  to  us  with  a  sweeter,  more 
earthlike  charm,  though  not  less  endowed 
with  all  that  is  pure  and  holy,  than  her 
sister  of  the  imaginary  Mediterranean  isle. 

F.   J.    FURNIVALL. 

Peri  (pi.  Peris) ,  in  Oriental  mythol- 
ogy, certain  gentle  spirits, — offspring 
of  the  fallen  angels  and  themselves 
constituting  a  link  between  man  and 
angel, — who  dwell  in  air  and  live  on 
perfumes  and,  though  themselves  ban- 
ished for  a  time  from  Paradise,  go 
about  this  lower  world  doing  good, 
especially  in  pointing  out  to  the  pure 
the  way  to  heaven.  In  Paradise  and 
the  Peri,  the  second  tale  in  Moore's 
Lalla  Rookh  (18 17),  one  of  these 
spirits  standing  disconsolate  by  the 
entrance  to  Eden,  is  told  by  the 
Angel  of  the  Gate  that  she  may 
obtain  admission  if  she  will  bring 
thither  "  the  gift  that  is  most  dear  to 
Heaven."  She  scours  the  earth  and 
brings  back  with  her  successively  a 
drop  of  patriot  blood  shed  by  a  dying 
warrior,  then  the  last  sigh  of  a  maiden 
who  had  died  nursing  her  plague- 
stricken  lover,  and  lastly  a  tear 
dropped  by  an  aged  sinner  who  had 
been  converted  by  a  child's  innocent 
prayer. 

Perrichon,  M.,  hero  of  a  comedy 
The  Journey  of  M.  Perrichon,  by 
Eugene  Labiche.  A  Paris  shopkeeper, 
wealthy,  vain,  simple-minded,  touring 
Switzerland  with  his  daughter. 

Petruchio,  in  Shakespeare's  The 
Taming  of  the  Shrew  (1594),  often 
known  as  Katherine  and  Petruchio^ 
from  its  leading  characters,  a  gentle- 
man of  Verona  who  deliberately 
undertakes  to  marry  Katherine  Mo- 
lina, locally  famous  as  "  the  Shrew," 
in  order  to  tame  her  into  a  model  wife. 
He  accomplishes  this  seemingly  im- 
possible feat,  not  by  chastisement, 
but  by  mental  and  moral  suasion. 
Vigorous  in  mind  and  body,  high- 
spirited,  but  with  perfectcontrol  over 


Philaminte 


298 


Pickwick 


his  temper,  with  an  unfailing  sense  of 
humor  and  with  an  iron  will  he  scares, 
persecutes  and  laughs  her  into  sub- 
mission. 

Philaminte,  in  Moli^re's  comedy, 
Les  Femmes  Savanies  (1672),  the 
maitresse  femme  or  strong-minded 
woman  of  Moliere's  time,  a  self- 
imagined  bel  esprit,  imperious  and 
dominating,  whose  henpecked  hus- 
band, the  honest  bourgeois  Chrysale, 
makes  only  a  feeble  protest  against 
her  extravagances.  With  her  daugh- 
ter Armande  and  her  sister-in-law 
B^lise,  she  seeks  to  found  a  learned 
circle  over  which  she  shall  be  queen, 
her  prime  minister  or  right-hand  man 
being  a  poet-taster  named  Trissotin 
(q.v.). 

Philammon,  the  leading  male  char- 
acter in  Charles  Kingsley's  historical 
romance,  Hypatia  (1838),  a  young 
Christian  monk,  self-immured  in  one 
of  the  rock  monasteries  on  the  upper 
Nile,  but  burning  with  a  desire  to 
rescue  his  fellow-men  from  sin  and 
destruction.  He  removes  to  Alex- 
andria, where  his  intellect  is  dazzled 
and  confused  and  his  faith  shaken 
by  the  spectacle  of  the  ancient  classic 
culture,  serene  in  its  splendid  certain- 
ties, making  a  final  stand  against  the 
clashing  hosts  of  Christian  disputants, 
all  seemingly  destined  to  perish  in 
internecine  strife  about  doctrinal 
trifles.  The  best  of  the  old  philosophy 
seems  to  him  embodied  in  the  person 
of  the  historical  Hypatia,  a  lecturer 
on  Neo-Platonism,  who  has  aroused 
the  antagonism  of  priests  and  monks 
and  is  finally  torn  to  pieces  by  a 
Christian  mob. 

Philander,  in  Ariosto's  Orlando 
Furioso  (15 1 6),  ^  a  gentleman  of 
Holland,  who  being  entertained  by 
Argeo,  baron  of  Servia,  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  provoke  the  love  of  Argeo's 
wife  Gabrina.  Imitating  Joseph's 
conduct  in  the  Potiphar  affair.  Phi- 
lander had  exactly  Joseph's  luck. 
Falsely  accused  he  was  cast  into  a 
dungeon.  Thither  Gabrina  followed 
him,  begging  that  he  would  defend 
her  against  a  wicked  knight.^  When 
he  consented  she  tricked  him  into 
killing  her  own  husband,  then  forced 


him  to  marry  her  under  threat  of 
betrayal,  and,  tiring  of  him  soon 
afterwards,  poisoned  him. 

Philaster,  hero  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  comedy,  Philaster,  or  Love 
Lies  Bleeding.  Ludwig  Tieck  with 
small  reason  suggests  that  in  this 
character  the  authors  designed  to 
give  Shakespeare  a  hint  as  to  how  a 
prince  deprived,  like  Hamlet,  of  his 
rights,  ought  to  behave,  just  as  in 
The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen,  they  in- 
directly attacked  Ophelia  by  show- 
ing how  ladies  disappointed  in  love 
should  demean  themselves. 

Pickle,  Peregrine,  titular  hero  of 
Smollett's  novel.  The  Adventures  of 
Peregrine  Pickle  (1751),  a  young 
scapegrace  overfond  of  practical 
jokes. 

The  savage  and  ferocious  Pickle,  besides 
his  gross  and  base  brutality,  besides  his 
ingratitude   to   his   uncle,   and   the   savage 

Propensity  which  he  shows  in  the  pleasure 
e  takes  to  torment  others  by  practical 
jokes,  resembling  those  of  a  fiend  in  glee, 
exhibits  a  low  and  ungentlemanlike  tone 
of  thinking,  only  one  degree  higher  than  that 
of  Roderick  Random.  .  .  .  We  certainly 
sympathize  very  little  in  the  distress  of 
Pickle,  brought  on  by  his  own  profligate 
profusion  and  enhanced  by  his  insolent 
misanthropy.  We  are  only  surprised  that 
liis  predominating  arrogance  does  not 
weary  out  the  benevolence  of  Hatchway 
and  Pipes,  and  scarce  think  the  ruined 
spendthrift  deserves  their  persevering  and 
faithful  attachment." — Sir  W.  Scott. 

Pickwick,  Samuel,  hero  of  The 
Posthumous  Papers  of  the  Pickwick 
Club  (1837-39)  by  Charles  Dickens, 
an  eccentric  and  benevolent  Lon- 
doner, middle-aged  and  of  the  middle 
classes,  unsophisticated,  hot-headed, 
but  essentially  amiable,  easily 
angered,  easily  pacified  and  easily 
led.  He  is  pictured  with  a  bald  head, 
a  smooth  round  face,  a  bland  and 
childlike  expression,  spectacled  nose, 
a  rotund  paunch,  and  short  stubby 
legs  thrust  into  black  gaiters  that 
reach  up  to  his  knee.  His  faithful 
attendant  is  Sam  Weller  (g.».).  See 
also  Bardell,  Mrs. 

Many  comic  writers  have  drawn  a  clever 
rascal  and  his  ridiculous  dupe;  here,  in  a 
fresh  and  very  human  atmosphere  we  have 
a  clever  servant  who  was  not  a  rascal,  and 
a  dupe  who  was  not  ridiculous.  Sam  Weller 
stands  in  som«  ways  for  a  cheerful  knowl- 


Picninnies 


299 


Kppa 


edge  of  the  world;  Mr.  Pickwick  stands  for 
a  still  more  cheerful  ignorance  of  the  world. 
— G.  K.  Chesterton,  Studies  in  Dickens. 

Picninnies.  A  nonsense  word  in- 
vented by  Samuel  Foote.  See  Pan- 
jandrum. 

Pinchwife,  Mr.,  one  of  the  principal 
male  characters  in  Wycherley's  com- 
edy, The  Country  Wife  (1672),  a 
London  citizen  who  has  married  an 
unsophisticated  girl  from  the  country 
and  is  only  too  conscious  of  the 
dangers  to  which  rustic  innocence  is 
exposed  in  the  town.  As  usual  in 
Restoration  plays  his  jealous  care  and 
caution  overreach  themselves  and 
precipitate  the  very  calamity  he 
wishes  to  guard  against. 

Pinchwife,  Mrs.  Margery,  the 
heroine  of  Wycherley's  comedy,  The 
Country  Wife,  an  ignorant  and  inno- 
cent rustic  beauty  who  has  her  eyes 
opened  only  too  widely  when  she  is 
transferred  from  country  to  city.  The 
plot  of  the  play  is  largely  borrowed 
from  Moli^re's  U  Ecole  des  Femmes 
and  Margery  is  a  brutalized  British 
version  of  Agnes  {q.v.).  In  David 
Garrick's  adaptation  fromWycherley, 
The  Country  Girl  (1766),  Margery 
Pinchwife  becomes  Peggy  Thrift  (g.t;.) . 

Compare  the  Ecole  des  Femmes  with  The 
Country  Wife.  Agnes  is  a  simple  and  ami- 
able girl,  whose  heart  is  indeed  full  of  love, 
but  of  love  sanctioned  by  honor,  morality 
and  religion.  Her  natural  talents  are  great. 
They  have  been  hidden,  and  as  it  might 
appear  destroyed  by  an  education  elabo- 
rately bad.  But  they  are  called  forth  into 
full  energy  by  a  virtuous  passon.  Her  lover, 
while  he  adores  her  beauty,  is  too  honest  a 
man  to  abuse  the  confiding  tenderness  of  a 
creature  so  charming  and  inexperienced. 
Wycherley  takes  this  plot  into  his  hands  and 
straightway  it  becomes  a  licentious  intrigue 
of  the  lowest  and  least  sentimental  kind, 
between  an  impudent  London  rake  and  the 
idiot  wife  of  a  country  squire. — MacaULAY 
Essays:    Leigh  Hunt. 

Pinkerton,  The  Misses,  in  Thack- 
eray's Vanity  Fair,  a  couple  of  dig- 
nified and  self-important  ladies  who 
kept  an  educational  establishment 
for  young  ladies  on  Chiswick  Mall. 
Here  Amelia  Sedley  went  to  school 
and  Rebecca  Sharp  was  a  pupil 
teacher. 

I  cannot  help  thinking  that,  although 
Vanity  Fair  was  written  In  184s  and  the 
following  years,  it  was  really  begun  in  1817, 


when  the  little  boy  so  lately  come  from  India 
found  himself  shut  in  behind  those  filagree 
iron  gates  at  Chiswick,  of  which  he  writes 
when  he  describes  Miss  Pinkerton's  estab- 
lishment. Whether  Miss  Pinkerton  was  or 
was  not  own  sister  to  the  great  Doctor  at  the 
head  of  the  boarding  school  for  young  gentle- 
men on  Chiswick  Mall,  to  which  "Billy  boy" 
(as  the  author  of  Vanity  Fair  used  to  be 
called  in  those  early  days)  was  sent,  remains 
to  be  proved.  There  is  certainly  a  very 
strong  likeness  between  those  two  majestic 
beings — the  awe-inspiring  Doctor  and  the 
great  Miss  Pinkerton — whose  dignity  and 
whose  Johnsonian  language  marked  an 
epoch  in  education. — Anne  Thackeray 
Ritchie.    Introduction  to  Vanity  Fair. 

Pip,  famihar  nickname  of  Philip 
Pirrip,  hero  of  Dickens's  Great 
Expectations  (i860).  An  orphan,  he 
is  brought  up  by  Joe  Gargery  {q.v.) 
and  his  shrewish  wife.  Abel  Mag- 
witch,  an  escaped  convict  whom  he 
unwittingly  helps,  takes  a  fancy  to 
the  boy,  and  when  he  becomes  a 
wealthy  sheep  farmer  in  Australia 
deposits  £500  a  year  with  lawyer 
Jaggers  to  educate  Pip  and  make  a 
gentleman  of  him.  In  the  end  Pip 
marries  Estella,  who  has  been  adopted 
in  infancy  by  Miss  Havisham  and 
who  turns  out  to  be  Magwitch's 
daughter. 

Pipchin,  Mrs.,  in  Dickens's  novel, 
Dombey  and  Son  (1846),  an  ill-favored 
old  woman  with  mottled  cheeks  and 
gray  eyes,  who  has  devoted  all  the 
energies  of  her  mind  to  the  study  and 
treatment  of  infancy.  "  She  was 
generally  spoken  of  as  a  '  great  mana- 
ger '  of  children  and  the  secret  of  her 
management  was,  to  give  them  every- 
thing that  they  didn't  like  and  noth- 
ing that  they  did."  While  she  lived 
on  buttered  toast  and  sweetbreads 
her  charges  were  starved.  ^  Paul 
Dombey  is  sent  to  board  with  her 
and  she  eventually  becomes  Mr. 
Dombey's  housekeeper. 

Pippa,  in  Robert  Browning's  drama 
Pippa  Passes  (1841),  an  innocent, 
sprightly  Italian  peasant  maid  in 
Asolo,  who  spends  her  New  Year 
holiday  by  wandering  through  the 
old  town  and  its  environs,  singing 
simple  and  tender  little  songs.  When 
she  returns  home  at  nightfall  she 
little  thinks  how  vitally  she  has 
affected  a  number  of  hearers,  the 
guilty  lovers  Sebald  and  Ottima,  the 


Pisanio 


300 


Plume 


artist  Jules  and  his  wife,  Luigi  and 
his  mother  and  Monsignor  the  Bishop. 
All  these  people  have  their  lives 
changed  by  suggestions  from  her 
songs  floating  in  upon  them  at  a 
critical  moment. 

Pisanio,  in  Shakespeare's  Cymhe- 
line,  servant  to  Posthumus,  who  being 
commissioned  to  murder  his  master's 
wife  Imogen,  persuades  her  to  escape 
in  boy's  clothes  to  Milford  Haven,  and 
sends  to  Posthumus  a  bloody  hand- 
kerchief as  evidence  that  the  murder 
has  been  done. 

Pizarro,  Francisco  (1471-1541),  a 
Spanish  soldier,  conqueror  of  Peru, 
is  the  hero  of  a  drama  by  Kotzebue 
entitled,  Spaniards  in  Peru,  which 
in  1799  was  paraphrased  in  English 
as  Pizarro,  nominally  by  R.  B.  Sheri- 
dan, but  really  by  one  of  his  hacks. 
The  play  deals  with  a  war  between 
Pizarro  and  Ataliba  (Atahualpa),  inca 
of  Peru.  In  the  Sheridan  version 
Pizarro  is  slain  in  combat  by  Alonzo, 
one  of  Ataliba's  officers.  This  is  a 
departure  from  Kotzebue  and  a  viola- 
tion of  historical  truth.  Pizarro  sur- 
vived to  become  the  conqueror  of 
Peru  and  was  assassinated  in  his 
palace  at  Lima  by  the  adherents  of 
his  one-time  friend  Amalgro  whom 
he  had  executed  in  1538. 

Placidas,  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene,  Book  iv  (1596),  the  physical 
double   of   his   friend   Amias.      See 

Pa  C  ANA. 

Plagiary,  Sir  Fretful,  in  Sheridan's 
comedy,  The  Cr*7/c,  an  affected,  super- 
cilious and  oversensitive  dramatist, 
obviously  drawn  from  Sheridan's  pet 
antipathy,  Richard  Cumberland.  One 
charge,  which  Sneer  flings  at  Sir 
Fretful  might,  with  almost  equal 
reason,  have  been  applied  to  Sheridan 
himself,  that  he  kept  stray  jokes  and 
pilfered  witticisms  in  his  commonplace 
book  with  as  much  method  as  the 
ledger  of  the  Lost  and  Stolen  Office. 

Pleydell,  Paulus,  in  Scott's  novel, 
Guy  Mannering,  an  Edinburgh  advo- 
cate described  iDy  the  author  as  "  a 
lively,  sharp-looking  gentleman,  with 
a  professional  shrewdness  in  his  eye, 
and,  generally  speaking,  a  professional 
formality  in  his  manners.    But  this, 


like  his  three-tailed  wig  and  black 
coat,  he  could  slip  off  on  a  Saturday 
evening  when  surroimded  by  a 
party  of  jolly  companions,  'and  dis- 
posed for  what  he  called  his  alti- 
tudes." In  his  diary,  under  date 
June,  1830,  Scott  alludes  to  "  the 
painting  by  Raebum  of  my  old  friend 
Adam  Rolland,  who  was  in  the  exter- 
nal circumstances,  but  not  in  frolic 
or  fancy,  my  prototype  for  Paul 
Pleydell."  Rolland  died  at  an  ad- 
vanced age  in  1819.  The  "  High 
Jinks  "  side  of  Counsellor  Pleydell 
was  probably  furnished  by  Andrew 
Crosbie,  who  died  thirty  years  before 
Guy  Mannering  was  published,  but 
left  a  jocund  memory  about  the  Par- 
liament House.  "  His  portrait  still 
adorns  its  walls,  and  in  Scott's  young 
advocate  days,  Crosbie's  meteor-like 
career  was  one  of  the  chief  traditions 
of  Bench  and  Bar.  (S.  R.  Crockett: 
The  Scott  Originals,  p.  97). 

Pliable,  in  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  Part  I  (1678),  a  neighbor  of 
Christian's,  who  accompanied  him 
as  far  as  the  Slough  of  Despond  and 
then  turned  back  discouraged. 

Plomish,  Thomas,  in  Dickens's 
Little  Dorrit,  a  plasterer,  a  long- 
legged,  loose-jointed,  smooth-cheeked, 
fresh-colored,  sandy-whiskered  man 
of  thirty.  He  generally  chimed  in 
conversation  by  repeating  the  words 
of  the  speaker.  Thus  when  Mrs. 
Plornish  tells  a  visitor  "Miss  Dorrit 
darsn't  let  him  know,"  Plomish 
echoes  "  Dursn't  let  him  know." 
Mrs.  Plornish's  name  is  Sally.  Her 
peculiarity  is  to  preface  all  her  re- 
marks with  "  Well,  not  to  deceive 
you."  Thus:  "  Is  Mr.  Plornish  at 
home?  "  "  Well,  sir,  not  to  deceive 
you,  he's  gone  to  look  for  a  job." 

Plume,  Sir,  in  Pope's  Rape  of  the 
Lock,  an  empty-headed  fop,  who 
talks  sententious  nonsense  freely 
interlarded  with  fashionable  oaths: 

Sir  Plume,  of  amber  snuff  box  justly  vain. 
And  the  nice  conduct  of  a  clouded  cane, 
With   earnest   eyes   and  round,  unthinking 

face. 
He  first  the  snuff  box  opened,  then  the  case. 

Pope  admitted  that  the  portrait 
was  drawn  from  Sir  George  Brown. 


Plummer 


301 


Poirier 


Speaking  of  the  effect  produced  by 
the  poem  he  said:  "  Nobody  but  Sir 
George  Brown  was  angry  and  he  was 
a  good  deal  so  and  for  a  long  time. 
He  cotdd  not  bear  that  Sir  Plume 
should  talk  nothing  but  nonsense 
(Spence:  Anecdotes).  Yet  the  biog- 
raphy of  Coke  of  Norfolk  claims  that 
Thomas  Coke,  great  grandfather  of 
Lord  Melbourne,  and  Vice-Chamber- 
lain to  Queen  Anne,  was  the  real  Sir 
Plume. 

Plummer,  Caleb,  in  Dickens's 
Cricket  on  the  Hearth  (1845),  a  poor 
toymaker,  devoted  to  his  blind 
daughter,  Bertha,  whom  he  deludes 
into  the  idea  that  they  are  living 
in  comfort  and  that  everything 
and  everybody  around  them  are 
delightful. 

Plyant,  Sir  Paul,  in  William  Con- 
greve's  comedy,  The  Double-dealer 
(1694),  a  henpecked  husband  of 
choleric  temper  in  general,  but  so 
thoroughly  dominated  by  his  second 
wife  that  he  dare  not  touch  a  letter 
addressed  to  himself  until  my  lady 
has  read  it,  and  so  infatuated  that 
he  would  not  believe  his  own  eyes 
and  ears  if  they  bore  testimony  to 
her  faithlessness.  Yet  under  his  very 
nose  she  carries  on  a  transparent 
intrigue  with  Ned  Careless. 

Sir  Paul  Plyant  with  his  night-cap  made 
out  of  a  piece  of  a  scarlet  petticoat,  tied  up 
in  bed  out  of  harm's  way,  and  looking,  with 
his  great  beard,  like  a  Russian  bear  upon  a 
great  drift  of  snow,  is  wholly  delightful. — 
E.  W.  Gosse:    Life  of  Congreve,  p.  55. 

Plymley,  Peter,  the  feigned  author 
of  Peter  Plymley s  Letters,  a  series  of 
epistles  written  by  Rev.  Sydney 
Smith,  and  advocating  the  removal 
of  the  secular  disabilities  of  Roman 
Catholics  in  England.  Peter  is  a 
Londoner  writing  to  his  brother 
Abraham,  the  parson  of  a  rural  dis- 
trict, who  is  evidently  a  kind-hearted, 
honest  and  conscientious  man;  but 
dull  and  ignorant  and  dreadfully 
scared  at  a  bogy  of  his  own  imagining 
— a  Popish  conspiracy  against  crown, 
church  and  commonwealth.  Abra- 
ham communicates  his  alarms  to  his 
brother  Peter  in  London  and  Peter's 
letters  are  replies  to  these  outpotuings. 


Podsnap,  Mr.  John,  in  Dickens's 
Our  Mutual  Friend,  a  pompous,  self- 
satisfied  person,  who  imagines  him- 
self a  shining  member  of  society, 
patronizes  his  acquaintances  and 
takes  Providence  under  his  protec- 
tion. The  author  sums  up  the  articles 
of  his  faith  as  Podsnappery.  "  They 
were  confined  within  close  botmds, 
as  Mr.  Podsnap 's  own  head  was  con- 
fined by  his  shirt-collar;  and  they 
were  enunciated  with  a  sounding 
pomp  that  smacked  of  the  creaking 
of  Mr.  Podsnap's  own  shoes." 

His  wife  is  a  "  fine  woman  for 
Professor  Owen,  quantity  of  bone, 
neck  and  nostrils  like  a  rocking  horse, 
hard  features "  and  a  majestic 
presence. 

Podsnap,  Miss  Georgiana,  their 
daughter,  is  an  undersized  damsel, 
with  high  shoulders,  low  spirits, 
chilled  elbow,  and  a  rasped  surface  of 
nose.  She  is  the  personified  "  Young 
Person,"  to  Podsnap's  mind, — ^an 
"  institution  "  which  required  every- 
thing in  the  universe  to  be  filed  down 
and  fitted  to  it.  The  question  about 
everything  was,  Would  it  bring  a 
blush  to  the  cheek  of  the  young 
person?  "  And  the  inconvenience  of 
the  young  person  was  that,  according 
to  Mr.  Podsnap,  she  seemed  always 
liable  to  burst  into  blushes  when  there 
was  no  need  at  all.  There  appeared 
to  be  no  line  of  demarcation  between 
the  young  person's  excessive  inno- 
cence and  another  person's  guiltiest 
knowledge." 

Pogram,  The  Honorable  Elijah,  in 
Dickens's  Martin  Chuzzlewii,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  American  Congress  and 
"  one  of  the  master  minds  of  our 
country,"  whose  acquaintance  Martin 
Chuzzlewit  makes  on  his  return  from 
Eden  to  New  York.  He  is  especially 
noted  as  the  author  of  the  "  Pogram 
Defiance,"  "  which  rose  so  much 
con- test  and  preju-dice  in  Europe." 

Poins,  in  both  parts  of  Shake- 
speare's Henry  IV,  a,  madcap  com- 
panion of  Sir  John  Falstaff,  witty, 
dissolute  and  reckless. 

Poirier,  M.,  a  Parisian  shopkeeper 
in  Le  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier,  1855  (The 
Son-in-law  of  Mr.  Poirier),  by  Emile 


Polizenes 


302 


Porter 


Augier  and  Jules  Sandeau.  Having 
made  a  fortune,  he  aspires  to  political 
and  social  honors  and  gladly  accepts 
as  his  daughter's  husband  a  penniless 
young  nobleman,  the  Marquis  de 
Presles  (q.v.).  Through  reckless  folly 
the  patrician  husband  involves  him- 
self in  serious  troubles  from  which  he 
is  twice  rescued  by  his  plebeian  wife. 

Polixenes,  inShakespeare'scomedy, 
A  Winter's  Tale  (1594), the  King  of 
Bohemia.  While  a  guest  in  Sicilia  the 
jealousy  of  Leontes  is  aroused  against 
him.  He  would  have  been  murdered 
but  for  Camillo,  who  warns  him  and 
flees  with  him  to  Bohemia.  He  op- 
poses the  marriage  of  his  son  Florizel 
to  Perdita,  until  the  truth  about  the 
shepherdess  is  revealed. 

Pollexfeu,  Sir  Hargrave,  the  villain 
in  Sir  Charles  Grandisony  who  is  foiled 
in  his  attempted  abduction  of  Miss 
Harriet  Byron,  by  the  titular  hero 
of  the  novel. 

Polonius,  the  lord  chamberlain 
in  Shakespeare's  Hamlet,  father  of 
Laertes  and  Ophelia.  He  is  kindly, 
but  vain,  pompous  and  self-satisfied; 
at  times  insufferably  tedious  and 
prolix;  yet  his  advice  to  his  son  and 
to  his  daughter  (both  in  Act  i,  Sc.  3), 
is  full  of  worldly  wisdom  pointedly- 
put.  Hamlet  slays  him  in  Act  iii. 
Sc.  4. 

Polonius  is  a  perfect  character  in  its 
kind;  nor  is  there  any  foundation  for  the 
objections  which  have  been^  made  to  the 
consistency  of  this  part.  It  is  said  that  he 
acts  very  fooHshly  and  talks  very  sensibly, 
There  is  no  inconsistency  in  that.  Again, 
that  he  talks  wisely  at  one  time  and  foolishly 
at  another;  that  his  advice  to  Laertes  is  very 
excellent,  and  his  advice  to  the  King  and 
Queen  on  the  subject  of  Hamlet's  madness 
very  ridiculous.  But  he  gives  the  one  as  a 
father,  and  is  sincere  in  it;  he  gives  the  other 
as  a  mere  courtier,  a  busy-body,  and  is 
accordingly  officious,  garrulous,  and  imperti- 
nent. In  short,  Shakespeare  has  been 
accused  of  inconsistency  in  this  and  other 
characters,  only  because  he  has  kept  up  the 
distinction  which  there  is  in  nature,  between 
the  understandings  and  the  moral  habits 
of  men,  between  the  absurdity  of  their  ideas 
and  the  absurdity  of  their  motives. — Haz- 
LITT :    Ckaaracters  of  Skakcapeare's  Plays. 

Pomfret,  Barbara,  heroine  of  Ame- 
lia Rives's  novelette,^  The  Quick  or  the 
Dead  (1888),  a  morbid,  introspective, 
hysterical  young  woman,  torn  by  the 


conflict  between  loyalty  to  her  dead 
husband,  Valentine  Bering,  and  her 
passion  for  a  living  man,  John  Bering, 
his  cousin  who  so  closely  resembles 
him  in  manner,  face  and  figure,  that 
she  finds  it  difficult  to  keep  the  two 
identities  distinct.  In  the  end  the 
Bead  triumphs  over  the  Quick  and 
"  Jock  "  is  dismissed. 

Pomona,  the  servant  girl  in  Frank 
R.  Stockton's  Rudder  Grange  (1880). 
With  her  taste  for  violent  reading,  her 
ingenuity  in  devices  and  her  experi- 
ences as  a  newly  married  bride  she 
furnishes  much  of  the  humor  of  the 
story.  In  a  sequel,  Pomona's  Travels ^ 
she  has  developed  into  the  presentable 
wife  of  Jone,  writing  letters  descrip- 
tive of  England,  where  she  is  enjoying 
her  honeymoon,  with  just  enough 
departure  from  the  correct  usage  of 
the  English  tongue  to  make  them  in 
keeping  with  her  character  and  not 
so  much  as  to  cheapen  them. 

Pompilia,  heroine  of  Robert  Brown- 
ing's poem.  The  Ring  and  the  Book. 
See  Prances  CHiNi,  Guido. 

Pons,  Sylvain,  a  simple-hearted  old 
musician,  hero  of  Balzac's  novel, 
Cousin  Pons  (1847),  the  story  of 
whose  gradual  breaking  down  under 
insults  and  humiliations  from  his 
purse-proud  relatives,  the  Marvilles, 
makes  the  staple  of  the  novel.  It 
belongs  to  the  series  Scenes  jrom 
Parisian  Life. 

Poquelin,  Jean-ah,  hero  and  title 
of  a  short  story  by  George  W.  Cable 
in  Old  Creole  Days  (1879),  a  wealthy 
Creole  who  lives  in  seclusion  in  an 
old  house  with  but  a  single  attendant, 
a  deaf-mute  negro.  His  secretiveness 
excites  suspicion,  he  is  mobbed  by  a 
crowd  of  idlers  and  dies  of  his  injuries. 
As  the  solitary  mourner  at  his  funeral 
there  appears  Jean's  brother,  a  leper, 
long  supposed  dead,  but  now  ready 
to  give  himself  up  to  lifelong  exile 
in  the  abhorrent  Terre  aux  Lepreux, 
from  which  the  dead  man  had  so  long 
shielded  him. 

Porter,  Sir  Joseph,  EI.C.B.,  in 
Gilbert  and  SulH van's  comic  opera, 
H.M.S.  Pinafore,  the  admiral  who 
"stuck  close  to  his  desk  and  never 
went  to  sea  "  and  hence  rose  to  be 


Portfaos 


303 


Pourceaugnac 


"ruler  of  the  Queen's  navee."  The 
character  is  a  supposed  skit  on 
William  H.  Smith,  head  of  a  gigantic 
newspaper  combine,  who  was  actually 
First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty  at  the  time. 

Porthos,  in  Dumas's  romance,  The 
Three  Guardsmen  (Mousquetaires) , 
one  of  the  immortal  trio,  a  good- 
natured  giant,  vain  and  stupid  as  is 
the  nature  of  giants,  yet  with  sense 
enough  to  place  his  superabundance 
of  strength  at  the  command  of  his 
more  keen  witted  companions.  In 
real  life  he  was  Isaac  de  Portau,  from 
Pau,  in  the  Pyrenees,  and  his  birth 
was  so  humble  that  the  **  de  "  was  of 
no  distinction  whatever. 

Portia,  in  Shakespeare's  Julius 
CcBsar  (1607),  the  wife  of  Brutus. 
Unwilling  to  be  excluded  from  her 
husband's  counsels  she  secretly  in- 
flicted a  severe  wound  upon  herself 
to  show  that  she  was  worthy  of  his 
conjfidence.  This  is  Plutarch's  story. 
In  the  method  of  her  suicide  on  hear- 
ing of  the  death  of  Brutus,  Shake- 
speare follows  Valerius  Maximus: 
"  She  being  determined  to  kill  her- 
self took  hot  burning  coals  into  her 
mouth,  and  kept  her  lips  closed  till 
she  was  suffocated  by  the  smoke." 

With  this  she  fell  distract 
And,  her  attendants  absent,  swallowed  fire. 
Julius  Ccesar,  Act  iv,  Sc.  3. 

Portia,  heroine  of  Shakespeare's 
Merchant  of  Venice,  a  rich  heiress  in 
love  with  Bassanio,  for  whose  sake 
she  undertakes  to  rescue  his  friend 
Antonio.  Borrowing  a  lawyer's  robe 
she  appears  in  court  and  unrecognized 
by  any  one  conducts  the  trial  in  such 
brilliant  fashion  that  Antonio  tri- 
umphs against  his  Jewish  enemy. 
See  Shylock. 

Shakespeare's  Portia,  my  ideal  of  a  per- 
fect woman, — the  wise,  witty  woman,  loving 
with  all  her  soul  and  submitting  with  all 
her  heart  to  a  man  whom  everybody  but 
herself  (who  was  the  best  judge)  would  have 
judged  her  inferior:  the  laughter-loving, 
light-hearted,  true-hearted,  deep-hearted 
woman,  full  of  keen  perception,  of  active 
eflSciency,  of  wisdom  prompted  by  love,  of 
tenderest  unselfishness,  of  generous  magna- 
nimity; noble,  simple,  humble,  pure,  true: 
dutiful,  religious  and  full  of  fun;  delightful 
above  all  others,  the  woman  of  women. — 
Francis  Anne  KKMBia:  An  Old  Woman's 
Gossip. 


Posa,  Marquis  of,  in  Schiller's  Don 
Carlos,  a  Spanish  nobleman  in  whom 
the  author  has  embodied  his  own  ideals. 

Schiller  wrote  for  the  great  ideas  of  the 
Revolution;  he  destroyed  the  intellectual 
Bastiles;  he  built  at  the  Temple  of  Liberty, 
and  indeed  at  that  great  temple  which 
should  enclose  all  races  like  a  brotherly 
community,  for  he  was  cosmopolite.  He 
began  with  that  hatred  of  the  past  which 
we  see  in  his  "Robbers,"  where  he  Is  Uke  a 
little  Titan  who  has  played  truant  from 
school,  and  drunk  schnapps,  and  smashed 
in  Jupiter's  windows,  and  ended  with  that 
love  for  the  future  which  we  already  see 
blooming  in  "Don  Carlos"  like  a  forest 
of  flowers,  he  himself  being  the  Marquis  of 
Posa,  who  is  at  once  prophet  and  soldier,  and 
who  under  a  Spanish  cloak  bears  the  noblest 
heart  which  ever  loved  and  suffered  In  all 
Germany, — H.  Heine. 

Posthumus,  Leonatus,  in  Shake- 
speare's Cymbeline,  the  husband  of 
Imogen. 

His  jealousy  is  not  heroic  like  Othello's, 
it  shows  something  of  grossness  unworthy 
of  his  truer  self.  In  due  time  penitential 
sorrow  does  its  work;  his  nobler  nature 
reasserts  itself. — Dowden. 

Pother,  Doctor,  in  Dibdin's  farce, 
The  Farmer's  Wife  (1780),  an  apothe- 
cary, "  city  register  and  walking 
story  book,"  who  furnished  George 
Colman,  the  younger,  with  a  hint  for 
his  Doctor  OUapod  (1802). 

Potion,  Mr.,  the  apothecary  in 
Smollett's  novel,  Roderick  Random, 
a  caricature  of  Mr.  John  Gordon,  an 
eminent  surgeon,  to  whom  the  novel- 
ist was  bound  apprentice  in  the  earlier 
years  of  his  h'fe,  and  to  whom  he  does 
greater  justice  by  the  mouth  of 
Matthew  Bramble  in  Humphrey 
Clinker. 

Potiphar,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  in  George 
William  Curtis's  satirical  sketches  of 
New  York  Society,  The  Potiphar 
Papers  (1853),  a  parvenu  coupl^, 
ignorant,  ill  bred  and  affected,  who 
strive  to  make  a  great  splurge  on 
their  suddenly  acquired  wealth.  Mr. 
Potiphar's  knowledge  of  art  may  be 
gathered  from  the  interest  he  displays 
in  "  Giddo's  Shay  Doover." 

Pourceaugnac,  M.  de,  hero  and 
title  of  a  comedy  (1660),  by  Moli^re, 
— a  man  from  the  provinces  who 
comes  to  Paris  to  wed  a  young  woman 
and  who  returns  baffled,  after  having 
been  tormented  and  turned  into  ridi- 


Powell 


304 


Precieux 


cule  by  valets  and  other  underlings, 
whom  a  more  fortunate  rival  has 
commissioned  to  persecute  him. 

Powell,  Mary,  the  first  wife  of  John 
Milton,  the  poet,  is  the  heroine  of  a 
novel  (1850),  by  Anne  Manning,  The 
Maiden  and  Married  Life  of  Mary 
Powell.  Mary  herself  is  the  feigned 
autobiographer.  She  describes  her 
meeting  with  the  poet,  their  court- 
ship and  marriage,  their  London  life, 
the  estrangement  that  led  to  his  tract 
on  divorce  and  their  eventual  recon- 
ciliation. 

Power,  Paula,  the  heroine  of 
Thomas  Hardy's  novel,  A  Laodicean^ 
or  the  Castle  of  the  De  Stancys  (1881). 
The  daughter  of  a  wealthy  but 
plebeian  railroad  builder,  she  succeeds 
to  the  possession  of  Castle  Stancy, 
the  estate  of  an  old  and  ruined  family, 
and  is  consequently  distracted  be- 
tween her  natural  bent  in  loving  a 
person  more  nearly  of  her  own  class 
and  an  attempted  reconstruction  of 
the  old  family  through  marriage  with 
one  of  its  poor  and  disreputable 
offshoots. 

Poyser,  Mrs.,  in  George  Eliot's 
novel  Adam  Bede,  a  farmer's  wife, 
shrewd,  sharp,  epigrammatic,  whose 
rustic  wit  and  wisdom  form  a  sort  of 
chorus  to  the  story.  The  character 
is  said  to  have  been  inspired  by  the 
author's  mother. 

Adam  Bede  for  most  of  us  means  pre- 
eminently Mrs.  Poyser.  Her  dairy  is  really 
the  centre  of  the  whole  microcosm.  She 
represents  the  very  spirit  of  the  place;  and 
her  influence  is  the  secret  of  the  harmony 
of  the  little  world  of  squire  and  parson  and 
parish  clerk  and  schoolmaster  and  black- 
smith and  carpenter  and  shepherd  and  car- 
ter. Each  of  these  types  is  admirably 
sketched  in  turn,  but  the  pivot  of  the 
whole  is  the  farm  in  which  Mrs.  Poyser 
displays  her  conversational  powers  .  .  . 
It  is,  indeed,  needless  to  insist  upon 
her  excellence;  for  Mrs.  Poyser  became 
at  once  one  of  the  immortals.  She  was 
quoted  by  Charles  Buxton — as  George 
Eliot  was  pleased  to  hear — in  the  House  of 
Commons  before  she  had  been  for  three 
months  before  the  public:  "It  wants  to  be 
hatched  over  again,  and  hatched  different." 
One  is  glad  to  know  that  Mrs.  Poyser's  wit 
was  quite  original.  "I  have  no  stock  of 
proverbs  in  my  memory,"  said  George  Eliot ; 

and  there  is  not  one  thing  put  into  Mrs. 
Poyser's  mouth  that  is  not  fresh  from  my 
own  mint." — SiR  Lbslis  Stbphsm:  George 
Biiot. 


Prasildo,  in  Bojardo's  Orlando 
Innamorato  (1495),  a  Babylonish 
nobleman,  who  falls  in  love  with 
Tisbina,  wife  of  his  friend  Iroldo. 
Tisbina  promises  to  return  his  love 
if  he  will  perform  certain  feats  that 
she  deems  impossible.  He  succeeds, 
however,  and  husband  and  wife 
seek  to  poison  themselves  to  avoid 
the  alternative.  Prasildo  resolves  to 
join  them,  but  learns  from  their 
apothecary  that  they  have  swallowed 
only  a  harmless  drink.  Prasildo 
informs  his  friend,  he  leaves  the 
country  and  Prasildo  marries  Tisbina. 
Later  Prasildo  hears  that  his  friend's 
life  is  in  danger,  whereupon  he  starts 
out  to  rescue  him  at  the  hazard  of 
his  own. 

Pratt,  Miss,  in  Susan  Ferrier's 
novel,  The  Inheritance,  an  old  maid  of 
irrepressible  and  buoyant  inquisitive- 
ness,  a  feminine  Paul  Pry,  who 
appears  and  reappears  wherever  she 
is  least  expected  and  least  wanted. 

Miss  Pratt  humiliates  the  proud  and 
outrages  the  dignified.  She  interrupts 
lovers'  confidences,  and  listens  to  political 
news  not  meant  for  her  and  finally  precipi- 
tates the  end  of  Lord  Rossville  by  alighting 
at  his  door  from  a  hearse — the  omnibus  of 
death  being  the  only  vehicle  she  could  find 
to  speed  her  on  the  way  through  a  heavy 
snow-storm.  Miss  Pratt  is  never  in  greater 
form  than  when  she  talks  about  her  invisible 
nephew,  Anthony  Whyte, — a  stroke  of 
genius,  and  the  anticipation  of  a  stroke  of 
genius  in  an  author  with  whom  Miss  Per- 
rier  has  much  in  common. — C.  T.  CopE- 
LAia>:June,  ii9Zt  Atlantic  Monthly. 

Theref  erence,  of  course,  is  to  Charles 
Dickens  and  his  Mrs.  Harris  {q.v.)  in 
Martin  Chuzzlewit. 

Precieux  (fem.Precieuses),  a  French 
term  given  to  belated  successors  of 
the  English  Euphuists,  who  originated 
towards  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Louis 
Xni  in  a  praiseworthy  effort  made 
by  leaders  of  society  to  correct  the 
prevalent  coarseness  in  speech  and 
literature,  but  had  degenerated  under 
Louis  XIV  into  absurdity  and  affec- 
tation. Like  the  Euphuists,  the 
Precieux  cultivated  a  taste  for  rare 
and  obsolete  words,  for  verbal  con- 
ceits, for  delicate  sentiments,  for 
romance,    for    ultra    refinement    in 


Presles 


305 


Princes  in  the  Tower 


manners  and  speech.  Moliere  came 
back  to  Paris  at  a  time  when  the  fad 
was  at  its  height;  and  gave  it  a  death- 
blow in  his  comedy  Les  Precieuses 
Ridicules  (1659).  Madelon,  the 
daughter,  and  Cathos,  the  niece  of 
Gorgibus,  the  two  Precieuses  of  the 
comedy,  decline  with  rudeness  the 
suitors  whom  Gorgibus  has  chosen 
for  them,  because  they  are  not  ideal 
Precieux.  The  rejected  ones  in 
ferocious  revenge  send  their  respect- 
ive valets,  Mascarille  and  Jodelet, 
disguised  the  one  as  a  marquis,  the 
other  as  a  viscount — to  visit  the 
ladies.  The  shams  are  received  with 
open  arms  and  a  ridiculous  interview 
follows  which  is  ended  by  the  appear- 
ance of  the  two  masters  and  the  ex- 
posure of  the  plot. 

Presles,  Marquis  Gaston  de,  in 
The  Son-in-  Law  of  M.  Poirier,  comedy 
by  Eugene  Augier  and  Jules  Sandeau, 
a  ruined  and  profligate  nobleman, 
whom  Poirier  (q.v.)  has  purchased 
for  his  daughter  Antoinette.  To 
Gaston's  own  astonishment  her  no- 
bility of  character  effects  his  reforma- 
tion and  makes  him  fall  in  love  with 
his  plebeian  wife,  whom  he  began  by 
slighting  and  neglecting. 

Prettyman,  Prince,  in  The  Re- 
hearsal (167 1 ),  a  burlesque  by  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham,  is  alternately 
a  prince  and  a  fisherman.  He  is  a 
caricature  on  the  Leonidas  of  Dry- 
den's  Marriage  d  la  Mode. 

Prig,  Betsey,  in  Dickens's  Martin 
Chuzdewit,  a  bosom  friend  of  Mrs. 
Gamp — of  the  same  build,  "  but  not 
so  fat;  and  her  voice  was  deeper  and 
more  like  a  man's.  She  had  also  a 
beard."  These  twoladies**  often  nuss 
together,  turn  and  turn  about,  one 
off,  one  on." 

Primrose,  Rev.  Dr.  Charles,  the 
titular  hero  of  The  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field (1766),  a  novel  by  Oliver  Gold- 
smith. Devout,  charitable,  unworldly, 
he  unconsciously  reveals  his  own 
character  in  his  feigned  autobiog- 
raphy and  allows  us  to  smile  at  his 
amiable  weaknesses. 

Dr.  Primrose  cherished  no  idea  of 
superiority  over  his  neighbors  and 
parishioners.  His  relations  with 
20 


them  were  of  the  friendliest  and  won 
him  their  heartiest  love.  He  went 
to  the  fair  to  sell  his  own  colt  and 
thought  nothing  of  having  a  friendly 
glass  over  the  transaction  at  the  inn. 
When  troubles  came  and  the  poor 
vicar  was  taken  to  a  debtor's  prison, 
his  flock  came  gallantly  to  the  rescue 
and  would  have  beaten  the  sheriff's 
officers  if  the  vicar  had  not  prevented 
them. 

In  Lupton's  Wakefield  Worthies,  p.  182, 
it  is  pointed  out  that  the  character  of  Dr. 
Primrose  may  have  been  drawn  from  the 
Rev.  Benjamin  Wilson,  Vicar  of  Wakefield 
from  1750  to  1764  and  that  Goldsmith  prob- 
ably had  paid  a  visit  to  Wakefield  before 
writing  his  novel.  There  is  a  "Thomhill" 
near  Wakefield  and  a  "  Primrose  Hill "  in  the 
city. — Notes  and  Queries,  11,  iv,  216. 

Primrose,  George,  elder  son  of  the 
Vicar,  who  goes  to  Amsterdam  to 
teach  the  Dutchmen  English,  but 
quite  forgets  that  an  antecedent 
knowledge  of  Dutch  would  be  requi- 
site. He  eventually  joins  the  army, 
becomes  Captain  Primrose  and  mar- 
ries Miss  Wilmot,  an  heiress.  Moses, 
the  younger  son,  achieves  a  blunder 
equally  famous  at  a  fair  where  he  is 
induced  to  trade  a  good  horse  for  a 
gross  of  green  spectacles  rimmed  with 
copper. 

Primrose,  Olivia,  elder  daughter  of 
the  Vicar  of  Wakefield;  enthusiastic, 
imaginative  and  easily  duped,  she 
falls  an  apparent  victim  to  the  wiles 
of  the  libertine  Squire  Thomhill,  but 
the  marriage  he  had  imagined  to 
be  a  mock  marriage  turns  out  to  be 
legal. 

Sophia,  the  younger  sister,  is 
sought  and  secured  in  honorable  mar- 
riage by  the  profligate's  respectable 
uncle.  Sir  William  Thomhill,  who 
masquerades  as  Mr.  Burchell  until 
the  psychological  moment  has  arrived. 

Princes  in  the  Tower,  the  name 
popularly  given  to  the  two  young 
sons  of  Edward  IV, — Edward  (who 
for  a  short  period  bore  the  title  of 
Edward  V)  and  Richard,  Duke  of 
York.  Imprisoned  by  their  uncle, 
who  usurped  the  title  of  Richard  III, 
they  were  put  to  death  in  the  Tower 
by  hired  assassins.  Their  fate  forms 
a    pitiful    episode    in    Shakespeare's 


Priscilla 


306 


Prj 


historical  play  Richard  Ill/ni  and  iv, 
2,  3.  Their  ghosts  appear  to  Richard 
in  V,  3. 

Priscilla,  in  Hawthorne's  Blithedale 
Romance  (1852),  a  fragile,  pretty, 
simple  girl,  a  sempstress,  whose  very- 
helplessness  appeals  to  John  Hollings- 
worth  and  Miles  Coverdale,  as  the 
more  splendid  and  full-bodied  charms 
of  Zenobia  fail  to  do.  Both  are  in 
love  with  her,  but  she  is  absolutely 
dominated  by  Hollingsworth. 

Prospero,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy 
The  Tempest,  the  banished  Duke  of 
Milan,  father  of  Miranda.  His 
absorption  in  the  pursuit  of  magic  had 
cost  him  his  throne;  for  his  wicked 
brother  Antonio  had  easily  usurped 
it  and  then  sent  him  and  his  little 
daughter  to  perish  at  sea.  But  "  the 
rotten  carcass  of  a  boat "  survived 
and  landed  the  pair  upon  an  island 
wilderness,  inhabited  only  by  monsters 
and  sprites  whom  he  readily  mastered. 
(See  Ariel,  Caliban,  Sycorax.) 
After  fourteen  years  spent  in  this 
comparative  solitude  Prospero  raises 
a  tempest  by  magic  arts  which  casts 
upon  the  shores  of  his  island  all  the 
occupants  of  a  shipwrecked  vessel, 
among  them  his  nephew,  Ferdinand, 
son  of  the  usurping  duke. 

Prospero,  the  great  enchanter,  is  alto- 
gether the  opposite  of  the  vulgar  magician. 
With  command  over  the  elemental  powers, 
which  study  has  brought  to  him,  he  possesses 
moral  grandeur,  and  a  command  over  him- 
self; in  spite  of  occasional  fits  of  involuntary 
abstraction  and  of  intellectual  impatience 
he  looks  down  on  life  and  sees  through  it, 
yet  will  not  refuse  to  take  his  part  in  it 
,  ,  .  It  has  been  suggested  that  Prospero 
is  Shakespeare  himself  and  that  when  he 
breaks  his  st^ff ,  drowns  his  book  and  dis- 
misses his  airy  spirits,  going  back  to  the 
duties  of  his  dukedom,  Shakespeare  was 
thinking  of  his  own  resigning  of  his  powers 
of    imaginative    enchantment. 

I  should  describe  Prospero  as  the  man 
of  genius,  the  great  artist,  lacking  at  first 
in  practical  gifts  which  lead  to  material 
success,  and  set  adrift  on  the  perilous 
sea  of  life,  in  which  he  finds  nis  en- 
chanted island,  where  he  may  achieve 
his  works  of  wonder.  He  bears  with 
him  Art  in  its  infancy — the  marvellous 
child,  Miranda.  The  grosser  passions  and 
appetites — Caliban — he  subdues.  Prospero's 
departure  from  the  island  is  the  aban- 
doning by  Shakespeare  of  the  theatre, 
the  scene  of  his  marvellous  works. — 
Edward    Dowden. 


Protocol,  Peter,  in  Scott's  Guy 
Mannering,  an  Edinburgh  attorney 
employed  by  Mrs.  Margaret  Bertram, 
of  Singleside. 

Proudie,  Dr.,  in  Anthony  Trol- 
lope's  Framley  Parsonage,  Barchester 
Towers  and  other  novels,  a  devoted 
and  zealous  clergyman,  a  martinet  in 
his  official  capacity,  but  a  serf  in  his 
home,  who  rises  to  be  Bishop  of  Bar- 
chester. He  is  henpecked  by  his  wife, 
a  strong-willed,  strong-voiced  lady, 
voluble  of  advice  that  is  meant  for 
and  meekly  accepted  as  command. 
She  has  positive  opinions  on  every 
phase  of  social,  moral,  and  ecclesias- 
tical law  and  has  no  hesitation  in 
expressing  them.  Trollope  carried 
her  triumphantly  from  novel  to 
novel  and  finally  killed  her  off  on 
overhearing  a  conversation  between 
two  clergymen  at  the  Athenaeum 
Club.  Discussing  Trollope 's  novels 
and  especially  this  character,  they 
agreed  that  they  would  not  write 
novels  at  all  unless  they  could  invent 
new  figures.  Trollope  went  home  and 
straightway  killed  the  bishop's  wife, 
but  regretted  her  to  the  end  of  his 
days. 

Mrs.  Proudie  is  not  merely  a  shrew  and  a 
scold,  though  she  is  a  shrew  and  does  scold 
the  bishop  dreadfully,  and  put  him  to  shame 
before  those  who  should  believe  him  master 
in  his  house  and  office.  It  is  less  her  am- 
bition than  her  nature  to  govern,  and  she 
cannot  help  extending  her  domain  from  the 
bishop  to  the  diocese  and  meddling  in 
things  which  it  is  mischievous  as  well  as 
indecorous  for  her  to  concern  herself  with. 
But  in  all  this  she  is  mainly  of  a  conscien- 
tious zeal;  she  has  done  so  much  to  forward 
the  fortunes  of  her  husband  and  to  promote 
his  rise  from  among  the  inferior  clergy  to  a 
spiritual  lordship  that  she  cannot  help  arro- 
gating power  and  attributing  merit  to  her- 
self in  the  management  of  his  affairs. — W. 
D.  Ho  wells:  Heroines  of  Fiction,  vol.  ii, 
p.  124. 

Pry,  Paul,  in  Poole's  comedy  of  that 
name  (1825),  a  busthng,  inquisitive 
but  amiable  busybody  who  makes  it 
his  daily  task  to  inquire  into  every- 
body's affairs  except  his  own  and 
keep  au  fait  with  the  latest  scandal 
and  the  last  bit  of  gossip  in  London 
town.  With  smiling  face  and  concili- 
ating air  he  breaks  into  the  most 
private  tSte-d-tite  and  disturbs  the 
most   intimate   domestic   scene — ^al- 


Prynne 


307 


Puff 


ways  deprecating  his  intrusion  by  a 
favorite  phrase — "  I  hope  I  don't 
intrude . ' '  Poole  is  said  to  have  drawn 
the  character  from  Thomas  Hill  who 
was  also  the  original  of  Thackeray's 
Archer  in  Pendennis  and  is  remem- 
bered as  a  friend  of  Lamb  and  Hazlitt. 
No  one  knew  the  date  or  place  of  his 
birth.  Lamb  declared  that  the  record 
had  perished  in  the  Great  Fire  in 
London. 

A  writer  in  T.  P/s  Weekly,  March 
i8,  19 lo,  who  knew  Hill  well,  thus 
describes  him: 

I  never  knew  anyone  who  managed  to 
make  "eleven  buckram  men  out  of  two," 
in  such  an  insidious  mode.  He  could  swell 
a  herring  to  a  whale  and  put  a  Jonas  within 
it  before  anyone  was  aware  what  he  was 
about.  It  was  a  species  of  monomania  with 
him  to  argue  himself  into  a  belief  that  the 
unfounded  thing  with  which  he  began  should 
terminate  in  a  solemn  averment  of  its 
reality;  in  other  words,  to  metamorphose 
the  pure  fiction  with  which  he  commenced 
into  an  honest  fact  in  winding  up.  Never 
was  there  such  a  busybody.  He  had  the 
virtue  amidst  all  of  being  a  harmless,  unde- 
signing  man  against  his  neighbour.  No  one 
ever  heard  of  his  doing  another  an  injury. 

Prynne,  Hester,  heroine  of  Haw- 
thorne's romance  The  Scarlet  Letter, 
the  wife  of  Master  Prynne,  an  English 
physician  living  in  Amsterdam.  The 
latter,  deformed  in  body  and  over- 
studious  in  mind,  has  never  succeeded 
in  capturing  her  love.  She  is  shipped 
to  Boston  to  await  his  coming  and 
when,  two  years  later,  he  arrives 
there,  the  first  sight  that  meets  his 
eye  is  his  wife  standing  in  the  public 
pillory  with  a  babe  in  her  arms  and 
the  letter  A,  a  badge  of  shame,  em- 
broidered in  scarlet  on  her  breast. 
Despite  earnest  appeals  from  Rev. 
Arthur  Dimmesdale,  a  young  clergy- 
man, she  refuses  to  divulge  the  name 
of  her  seducer.  Prynne  now  assumes 
the  name  of  Roger  Chillingworth  and 
attaches  himself  to  the  Rev.  Arthur. 
His  suspicions  are  confirmed.  Arthur 
is  the  culprit,  and  in  token  thereof  (it 
is  hinted),  a  cancerous  growth  has 
imprinted  upon  his  flesh  the  scarlet 
badge  that  Hester  must  flaunt  before 
the  world.  She  pities  his  sufferings, 
tries  to  bolster  up  his  failing  spirits, 
and  lighten  the  melancholy  that  is 
killing   him,   and   finally   takes   her 


place  beside  him  in  the  pillory  where 
he  has  climbed  to  make  public  con- 
fession of  his  guilt. 

Puck,  in  Shakespeare's  A  Mid- 
summer  Night's  Dream,  court  jester 
to  Oberon,  King  of  the  Fairies,  ever 
ready  to  play  a  prank  or  perform  a 
service. 

Puck,  or  Robin  Goodfellow,  is  the 
leader  of  the  fairy  band.  He  is  the  Ariel 
of  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream;  and  yet 
as  unlike  as  can  be  to  the  Ariel  in  The 
Tempest.  No  other  poet  could  have 
made  two  such  diflFerent  characters  out  of 
the  same  fanciful  materials  and  situations. 
Hazlitt  :    Characters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays. 

Puck,  in  Rudyard  Kipling's  Puck 
of  Pook's  Hill  (1906),  self-described 
as  "  the  Oldest.  Old  Thing  in  Eng- 
land," who  introduces  to  the  children, 
Dan  and  Una,  a  procession  of  men 
who  have  lived  or  thriven  on  a  spring 
from  the  soil  of  Old  England.  He  is 
variously  spoken  of  as  the  Faun, 
Robin  Goodfellow,  Lob-lie-by-the-fire 
and  Nick  o'  Lincoln.  He  occurs  in  all 
the  stories  of  Puck  of  Pook's  Hill  and 
in  most  of  the  second  series,  entitled 
Rewards  and  Fairies,  1910. 

Puff,  Mr.,  in  Sheridan's  burlesque, 
The  Critic  (1779),  a  Grubstreet  hack, 
who  having  failed  in  every  other 
attempt  at  earning  a  living  takes  to 
criticism  as  a  last  resort.  "I  am  a 
practitioner  in  panegyric,"  he  says  of 
himself,  "  or  to  speak  more  plainly,  a 
professor  of  the  art  of  puflSng. ' '  Foote 
had  already  used  the  name  for  a  pub- 
lisher in  his  farce.  The  Patron  (1764). 
This  Mr.  Puff^  has  no  belief  in  the 
saleable  qualities  of  * '  panegyric  and 
praise."  Nobody  he  thinks  will  give 
money  to  be  told  that  Mr.  Such-a-one 
is  a  wiser  and  better  man  than  him- 
self. "  No,  no;  'tis  quite  and  clean  out 
of  nature.  A  good  sousing  satire, 
now,  well  powdered  with  personal 
pepper,  and  seasoned  with  the  spirit 
of  party,  that  demolishes  a  conspicu- 
ous character  and  sinks  him  below 
our  own  level — there,  there  we  are 
pleased;  there  we  chuckle  and  grin, 
and  toss  the  half-crowns  on  the 
counter." 

Puff,  Orator,  in  the  poem  of  that 
name  by  Thomas  Moore,  in  M.  P.  or 
the  Blue-Stocking,  an  operetta  (1811)^ 


Pumblechook 


308 


Pyncheon 


a  public  speaker  who  cultivates  two 
voices  for  use  in  his  orations.  ^  Falling 
down  a  coalhole  one  night  a  disgusted 
would-be  rescuer  leaves  him  to  his 
fate.  As  there  are  two  of  you,  he  says, 
you  can  help  each  other  out.^  The 
moral  is  conveyed  in  the  final  lines  of 
each  stanza: 

Oh  hoi  Orator  Puff. 

One  voice  for  an  orator's  stirely  enough! 

Pumblechook,  in  Dickens's  Great 
Expectations ^  a  well-to-do  corn-chand- 
ler, uncle  to  Joe  Gargery,  who  makes 
himself  peculiarly  offensive  to  Pip  by 
his  pompous  patronage  and  his  habit 
of  springing  mathematical  problems 
on  him  for  instant  solutions.  When 
Pip  realizes  his  expectations  Uncle 
Piunblechook  abases  himself  but  he 
recovers  his  self-poise  when  Pip  is 
once  more  in  reduced  circtimstances, 
piously  explaining  the  lad's  reverses 
as  the  vengeance  of  Providence  on  his 
ingratitude  to  Pumblechook. 

Pimch,  nickname  of  the  boy  hero 
of  Baa  Baa  Black  Sheep,  in  Rudyard 
Kipling's  volume  of  short  stories,  Wee 
Willie  Winkie.  The  child  of  Anglo- 
Indian  parents,  Punch  with  his  sister 
is  committed  to  the  care  of  an  aunt 
in  England  and  undergoes  a  series  of 
petty  torments,  professedly  designed 
for  the  good  of  his  soul,  which  reduce 
him  to  a  condition  of  sullen  suspicion 
and  stubbornness  that  is  only  lifted  by 
the  arrival  of_  his  mother.  "  Punch 
Uves  with  an  intense  vitality,"  says 
Edmund  Gosse,  "  and  here  without 
any  indiscretion  we  may  be  sure  that 
Mr.  KipUng  has  looked  inside  his 
own  heart  and  drawn  from  life." 

Pure,  Simon,  in  Mrs.  Centlivre's 
comedy,  A  Bold  Stroke  for  a  Wife 
(17 18),  a  young  Quaker  from  Penn- 
sylvania who  comes  to  London  to 
attend  the  quarterly  meeting  of  his 
sect.  He  is  armed  with  a  letter  of 
introduction  from  Aminadab  Hold- 
fast to  Obadiah  Prim,  a  strict  and 
rigid  Quaker,  who  is  one  of  the  four 
guardians  of  an  heiress,  Anne  Lovely. 
Colonel  Feignwell,  a  suitor  for  Anne's 
hand,  gets  possession  of  this  letter  by 
strategy,  passes  himself  off  as  Simon 
Pure  and  ingratiates  himself  not  only 


with  Friend  Prim,  but  with  the  three 
other  guardians.  When  the  real 
Simon  Pure  turns  up  he  is  treated  as 
an  impostor  and  it  is  not  until  Feign- 
well  has  won  the  heiress  that  he  suc- 
ceeds in  obtaining  credentials  and 
witnesses  to  his  identity. 

Purple  Island,  the  name  which 
Phineas  Fletcher  applies  to  the  human 
frame  in  his  poem,  The  Purple  Island 
or  the  Isle  of  Man  (1633).  It  is 
divided  into  12  cantos  each  of  which 
is  sung  by  a  shepherd  to  his  compan- 
ions. The  first  five  deal  with  the 
body,  whose  muscles,  bones,  arteries 
and  veins  are  minutely  pictured  as 
hills,  dales,  streams  and  rivers.  The 
remaining  cantos  deal  with  the  mind. 
The  King  of  the  Isle  of  Man  is 
Intellect,  whose  eight  counsellors  are 
Common  Sense,  Fancy,  Memory  and 
the  Five  Senses.  The  Vices  attack 
the  human  fortress,  and  a  fierce  con- 
test is  waged  for  the  possession  of  the 
human  soul.  Finally  an  angel  (King 
James  I)  appears  on  the  scene  and 
promises  victory  to  the  Virtues. 
Fletcher  may  have  profited  by  a  hint 
from  Spenser's  Body  Castle;  he  may 
have  suggested  one  forPoe's  Haunted 
Palace. 

Pyncheon,  Hepzibah,  sister  to 
Clifford  and  to  the  Judge  (see  below), 
in  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables. 

Hepzibah  Pyncheon,  struggling  in  an 
agony  of  shame  and  impotence  to  submit 
to  the  rude  contact  of  the  world,  is  the  true 
parent  of  all  those  stiffened  lonely  women 
that  haunt  the  scenes  of  Mrs.  [Mary  E. 
Wilkins]  Freeman's  little  stage.  Only  there 
is  this  signal  difference:  poor  blighted  Hep- 
zibah is  part  of  a  great  drama  of  the  con- 
science which  in  its  brooding  over  the  curse 
of  ancestral  sin  can  only  be  compared  with 
the  Ate  of  the  ^schylean  theatre. — Paul 
More,  Shelburne  Essays,  Second  Series, 
Hawthorne. 

Pyncheon,  Judge,  in  Hawthorne's 
novel  of  New  England  life.  The  House 
of  the  Seven  Gabks,  a  hypocrite  and  a 
Pharisee,  who  masks  imder  a  suave 
and  specious  exterior  a  grasping, 
greedy  and  relentless  spint.  The 
chapter  in  which  stricken  suddenly  by 
heart  disease  he  sits  dead  in  his  diair 
all  night  while  the  author  moralizes 
over  him  is  a  terrible  and  searching 
bit  of  analysis.    Hawthorne  was  half 


Pyrocles 


309 


QuicHy 


annoyed  and  half  amused  by  an 
indignant  protest  from  the  descend- 
ant of  a  real  Judge  Pyncheon,  a  Tory 
and  refugee  resident  in  Salem  at  the 
time  of  the  Revolution,  and  "  a  most 
exemplary  old  gentleman,"  who 
thought  it  monstrous  that  the  vir- 
tuous dead  could  not  be  suffered  to 
rest  peacefully  in  their  graves. 

"The  joke  of  the  matter  Is,"  says  Haw- 
thorne in  a  letter  to  his  publisher  (Field: 
Yesterdays  with  Authors),  "that  I  never  heard 
of  his  grandfather,  nor  knew  that  any 
Pyncheons  had  ever  lived  in  Salem,  but 
took  the  name  because  it  suited  the  tone 
of  my  book  and  was  as  much  my  property 
for  fictitious  purposes  as  that  of  Smith. 
I  have  pacified  him  by  a  very  polite  and 
gentlemanly  letter,  and  if  you  ever  publish 
any  rtiore  of  the  Seven  Gables  I  should  like 
to  write  a  brief  preface  expressive  of  my 
anguish  for  this  unintentional  wrong  and 
making  the  best  reparation  possible,  else 
these  wretched  old  Pyncheons  will  have  no 
peace  in  the  other  word  nor  in  this." 

Pyrocles  and  Musidorus,  in  Sir 
Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia  (1590),  two 


princes  who  are  shipwrecked  in  that 
land  of  fable  and  make  love  to  King 
Basilius's  daughters,  Philoclea  and 
Pamela.  Pyrocles  dons  Amazon's 
attire  and  under  the  name  of  Zelmane 
is  admitted  to  the  King's  lodge.  He 
inspires  love  in  both  Basilius  and  his 
Queen,  the  one  deeming  him  a  woman, 
the  other  detecting  a  man  under  his 
disguise.  He  appoints  a  meeting 
with  each  in  a  certain  cave  at  mid- 
night trusting  that  they  will  not 
recognize  each  other  in  the  darkness. 
Thus  he  unwittingly  fulfils  a  mysteri- 
ous oracle  delivered  to  Basilius: 

Thou  with  thy  wife  adultery  shalt  commit. 

The  situation  of  Pyrocles  in  female 
attire  anticipates  many  Elizabethan 
dramas  that  turn  upon  confusion  of 
sex;  the  innocent  adultery  may  also 
have  given  a  hint  to  Shakespeare  in 
the  case  of  Bertram  and  Helena. 


Quarll,  Philip,  hero  of  an  anony- 
mous romance.  The  Hermit  (1727), 
which  was  one  of  the  nimierous  imita- 
tions following  in  the  wake  of  Robin- 
son Crusoe,  Like  Robinson,  Philip  is 
wrecked  upon  a  desert  island.  A 
rather  startling  innovation  is  that  of 
making  an  ape,  instead  of  another 
Man  Friday,  his  sole  companion  and 
sharer  of  his  home. 

Quasimodo,  in  Victor's  romance, 
Notre  Dame  de  Paris  (183 1),  the 
hunchback  bell  ringer,  bow-legged, 
deaf  and  one-eyed  who  lives  sequest- 
ered in  the  furthest  recesses  of  the 
Cathedral  and  has  grown  to  manhood 
almost  unvisited  by  the  light  of  day. 
He  loves  Esmeralda  the  gypsy  girl. 
She  has  only  a  shuddering  pity  for 
him,  but  seeks  his  aid  when  the  mob 
proclaims  her  a  witch.  He  hides  her 
till  she  is  enticed  away  by  the  arch- 
deacon, Claude  FroUo,  who  cherishes 
a  base  passion  for  her  that  she  does 
not  return.  Enraged,  Frollo  surren- 
dered her  to  the  mob  and  she  was 
hanged.  Quasimodo  throws  Frollo 
over  the  battlements  of  Notre  Dame 


and  disappears.  Two  years  later 
his  skeleton  was  found  in  the  cave  of 
Montfaucon  clasping  that  of  Esmer- 
alda. He  had  crept  into  the  cave 
where  her  body  had  been  cast  and 
died  by  her  side. 

Quayle,  Glory,  heroine  of  Hall 
Caine's  novel.  The  Christian  (1897). 
The  beautiful  granddaughter  of  a 
parson  in  the  Isle  of  Man,  she  is  be- 
loved by  John  Storm,  son  of  the  local 
magnate  Lord  Storm.  But  she  will 
not  marry  him.  Both  find  their  way 
to  London.  Storm,  who  has  taken 
orders,  devotes  his  life  to  work  among 
the  poor  in  the  slums,  while  she  be- 
comes first  a  hospital  nurse  and  later 
a  musical  artist.  Storm's  earnest, 
but  unpractical  attempts  at  social 
reform  antagonize  not  only  his  eccle- 
siastical superiors  but  the  adversaries 
of  the  church,  and  he  dies  of  wotmds 
received  in  a  street  brawl.  Glory 
marries  him  on  his  death  bed. 

Quickly,  Mistress,  in  Shakespeare's 
The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  (1601),  a 
servant  of  all  work  for  Dr.  Caius,  the 
French  physician,  cheerfully  acting 


Quickly 


310 


Rabagas 


as  the  go-between  for  three  suitors 
of  Anne  Page,  distributing  among 
them  her  disinterested  wishes  for  the 
success  of  each. 

Quickly,  Mistress  Nell,  in  both 
parts  of  Henry  IV  and  in  Henry  V, 
hostess  of  a  tavern  in  Eastcheap 
frequented  by  Prince  Hal  and  his 
boon  companions,  Falstaflf,  Poins  and 
their  friends.  In  //  Henry  IV,  Mis- 
tress Quickly  arrests  Falstaff  for  debt, 
but  dismisses  the  bailiffs  on  hearing 
of  his  commission  as  captain  and 
expresses  increased  and  indeed  un- 
limited affection  for  and  trust  in 
"  the  honey  sweet  "  old  knight.  Her 
description  of  Falstaff's  death  occurs 
in  Henry  V,  Act  ii,  Sc.  3.  She  herself 
dies  before  the  end  of  this  play,  after 
marrying  Pistol,  "  the  lieutenant  of 
Captain  Sir  John's  army." 

Quilp,  Daniel,  in  Dickens's  Old 
Curiosity  Shop  (1840),  a  dwarf 
hunchback,  hideous  alike  in  mind  and 
body,  cunning,  malicious,  malignant, 
rejoicing  in  cruelty  for  its  own  sake, 
and  especially  delighting  to  torture  his 
meek  little  wife  Betsey.  He  makes  a 
living  in  devious  ways  and  is  drowned 
in  attempting  to  escape  from  arrest. 

Quince,  Peter,  in  Shakespeare's 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  a  carpen- 
ter who  ^  takes  the  part  of  stage- 
manager  in  the  interlude  of  Pyramus 
and  Thisbe. 

Quirk,  Thady,  the  supposed  narra- 
tor of  the  memoirs  of  the  Rackrent 
family  of  Ireland  as  they  appear  in 
the  pages  of  Maria  Edgeworth's  novel 
Castle  Rackrent  (1782). 

Quixote,  Don  (in  England  usually 
pronounced  as  it  is  spelled;  in  the 
United  States,  conforming  to  Spanish 
usage,  as  Ke-ho-tay),  hero  of  one  of 
the   most   famous   mock-heroic   ro- 


mances in  all  literature,  Cervantes* 
History  of  the  Renowned  Don  Quixote 
de  la  Mancha  ( 1 605- 1 6 1 5) .  He  is  rep- 
resented as  a  gentle  and  generous 
enthusiast,  who  has  brooded  over  the 
romances  of  chivalry  until  they  have 
disordered  his  brain,  so  that  he  imag- 
ines they  are  true,  and  himself  a 
knight-errant  predestined  to  sally 
out  into  the  world,  rescue  damsels  in 
distress,  slay  dragons  and  giants  and 
generally  to  right  wrongs,  defend  the 
oppressed,  and  avenge  the  injured. 
Accordingly  he  makes  for  himself  an 
amateur  suit  of  armor,  mounts  a  bat- 
tered steed  whom  he  calls  Rosinante, 
selects  a  peasant  girl  (see  Dulcinea 
DEL  TOBASO)  for  his  lady  love,  and 
chooses  for  his  squire  a  middle-aged 
clown  (see  Sancho  Panza)  who  is  as 
grossly  materialist  as  he  himself  is 
idealist. 

These  two  sally  forth  from  their  native 
village  in  search  of  adventures,  of  which 
the  excited  imagination  of  the  knight,  turn- 
ing windmills  into  giants,  solitary  inns  into 
castles,  and  galley-slaves  into  oppressed 
gentlemen,  finds  abundance  wherever  he 
goes;  while  the  esquire  translates  them  all 
into  the  plain  prose  of  truth  with  an  admir- 
able simplicity,  quite  unconscious  of  its  own 
humor,  and  rendered  the  more  striking  by 
its  contrast  with  the  lofty  and  courteous 
dignity  and  magnificent  illusions  of  the  supe- 
rior personage.  There  could,  of  course,  be 
but  one  consistent  termination  of  adven- 
tures like  these.  The  knight  and  his  esquire 
sufEer  a  series  of  ridiculous  discomfitures,  and 
are  at  last  brought  home,  like  madmen,  to 
their  native  village,  where  Cervantes  leaves 
them,  with  an  intimation  that  the  story  of 
their  adventures  is  by  no  means  ended.  In 
a  continuation,  or  Second  Part,  published  in 
161S,  the  Don  is  exhibited  in  another  series 
of  adventures,  equally  amusing  with  those 
in  the  First  Part,  and  is  finally  restored, 
"through  a  severe  illness,  to  his  right  mind, 
made  to  renounce  all  the  follies  of  knight- 
errantry,  and  die,  like  a  peaceful  Christian, 
in  his  own  bed." — George  Ticknor:  His- 
tory of  Spanish  Literature. 


Rab,  the  dog  hero  of  Dr.  John 
Brown's  tale,  Rab  and  his  Friends 
(1858),  a  mastiff  belonging  to  a  poor 
Scotch  carrier.  The  carrier's  wife, 
Ailie,  dies  after  an  operation  in  the 
Edinburgh  Hospital,  and  her  husband 
soon  follows  her  to  the  grave.  Rab 
was  present  at  both  burials,  and  after 


the  second  slinks  home  to  the  stable. 
He  could  not  be  driven  from  this  and 
ultimately  had  to  be  killed.  The 
story  embodies  a  reminiscence  of  the 
author's  student  days. 

Rabagas,  hero  of  a  satirical  comedy 
of  that  name  (1872),  by  Victorien 
Sardou.    He  is  a  compound  of  Gam- 


Rabbit 


311 


Ramsay 


betta  and  Emile  Ollivier,  a  demagogue 
who  flatters  the  passions  of  the  mob , 
but  aims  at  power  only  to  gratify  his 
snobbish  love  of  rank.  The  scene  is 
laid  in  Monaco.  By  cheap  bribes  and 
flattery  Rabagas  is  won  over  to  the 
side  of  the  Duke,  becomes  prime 
minister,  and,  when  the  insurrection 
breaks  out  which  he  himself  had 
planned,  gives  orders  to  shoot  and 
imprison  his  old  associates.  Then 
comes  a  change  in  his  fortunes.  The 
Duke  needs  him  no  longer;  the  people 
hiss  him.  He  is  ousted  from  office 
and  leaves  the  stage  with  these  words: 
"  Farewell;  I  go  to  the  only  country 
where  talents  like  mine  are  appre- 
ciated— to  France." 

Rabbit,  Br*er,  the  favorite  hero  in 
the  plantation  stories  told  by  Uncle 
Remus  (q.v.),  wherein  Brer  Fox,  his 
superior  in  strength,  is  usually  victim- 
ized by  craft  and  mental  agility. 

Raby,  Aurora,  in  Byron's  Don  Juan 
(1824),  introduced  in  canto  xv  as  a 
guest  in  the  house  of  Lord  and  Lady 
Amundeville.  A  Roman  Catholic, 
she  is  young,  rich,  beautiful,  and  good 
— "  a  rose  with  all  its  sweetest  leaves 
yet  folded."  Don  Juan  is  evidently 
interested  in  her,  but  the  poem  breaks 
off  abruptly,  and  the  reader  is  left  to 
conjecture  what  part  the  poet  had 
designed  that  she  should  play  in  his 
hero's  Ufe. 

Rackrent,  Sir  Patrick,  in  Maria 
Edgeworth's  novel  of  Irish  life.  Castle 
Rackrent  (i 801),  is  the  original  Rack- 
rent,  the  founder  of  the  house  and  "  a 
monument  of  old  Irish  hospitaUty." 
So  says  Thady  Quirk,  the  historiogra- 
pher of  the  Rackrent  family.  He  is 
succeeded  by  Sir  Murtagh  Rackrent, 
famous  for  his  knowledge  of  law  and 
his  ignorance  of  finance.  Then  comes 
Sir  Kit,  equally  reckless  of  money, 
who  imprisoned  his  Jewish  wife  for 
seven  years  because  she  refused  to 
surrender  her  diamonds;  and  finally 
Sir  Condy  Rackrent,  who  squanders 
what  is  left  of  the  family  fortimes  and 
dies  from  quafi&ng  on  a  wager  a  great 
horn  of  pimch. 

Radigund  or  Radigone,  in  Spenser's 
Faerie  Queene,  the  haughty  Queen 
of  the  Amazons.     Having  been  re- 


jected by  Bellodant  the  Bold,  she 
revenges  herself  on  all  men  who  fall 
into  her  power  by  making  them  don 
woman's  apparel  and  perform  the 
womanly  tasks  of  spinning  and  sew- 
ing. One  of  these  victims  was  Sir 
Artegal,  with  whom  she  fell  in  love; 
but  Britomart  slew  her  and  hberated 
the  knight. 

Ralph  or  Ralpho,  Squire,  in  Butler's 
Hudibras,  the  attendant  and  compan- 
ion of  the  hero,  an  Independent  with 
a  touch  of  the  Anabaptist,  who  despis- 
ing book  lore,  claims  to  be  "  learned 
for  salvation,"  in  the  jargon  of  those 
sects,  by  means  of  "  gifts  "  or  "  new 
light."  Being  a  tailor  by  trade,  he  is 
punningly  said  to  resemble  ^neas 
and  Dante  in  that  he  has  seen  "  hell," 
a  cant  name  in  the  sartorial  world 
for  a  receptacle  for  shreds  and  scraps. 

Raminagrobis,  in  Rabelais 's  ro- 
mance Pantagrtiel,  book  iii,  a  starve- 
ling French  poet,  intended  as  a  cari- 
cature of  Guillaume  Cretin,  a  now- 
forgotten  author,  highly  esteemed  by 
some  of  his  contemporaries. 

Ramona,  heroine  of  a  novel  of  that 
title  (1885),  by  Helen  Himt  Jackson. 
An  orphan,  she  is  bred  as  a  foster- 
sister  to  Francis  Ortegna,  whose 
mother  is  passionately  devoted  to 
him,  but  only  coldly  just  to  the  ahen. 
The  boy  grows  to  love  her;  she  has 
only  sisterljr  affection  for  him.  A 
mission  Indian,  Alessandro,  shows  her 
what  love  means,  a  love  which  Mrs. 
Ortegna  holds  to  be  an  insult.  The 
couple  elope  to  be  married,  and  to 
undergo  frightful  experiences,  which 
kill  Alessandro  and  throw  Romona,  a 
wreck,  back  into  the  arms  of  the 
loyal  and  devoted  Francis.  He  finally 
marries  her,  or  that  part  of  her  which 
has  not  died  with  her  husband. 

Ramsay,  Adam,  usually  alluded  to 
as  Uncle  Adam,  because  he  stands  in 
that  relationship  to  the  heroine,  an 
eccentric  character  in  Miss  Susan 
Ferrier's  novel,  The  Inheritance.  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  in  his  Journal,  under 
date  January  20,  1829,  notes: 
"  Honest  old  Mr.  Ferrier  is  dead,  at 
extreme  old  age.  He  was  a  man  with 
strong  passions  and  strong  prejudices, 
but  with  generous  and  manly  senti- 


Ramsbottom 


312 


Rarahti 


ments  at  the  same  time.  We  used 
to  call  him  Uncle  Adam,  after  that 
character  in  his  gifted  daughter's 
novel."  In  the  gifted  daughter's 
novel  we  learn  that  Uncle  Adam  was 
**  cross  as  two  sticks,"  but  his  charac- 
ter^as  a  whole  is  not  unattractive  and 
in  intentions  is  never  unamiable. 

Ramsbottom,  Mrs.  Julia,  the 
feigned  author  of  a  series  of  letters, 
beginning  in  1820,  which  ran  through 
a  London  newspaper,  John  Bull,  and 
were  collected  in  book  form  in  1829. 
Theodore  Hook,  the  real  author,  here 
followed  the  traditions  set  by  Wini- 
fred Jenkins  in  Smollett's  Humphrey 
Clinker,  and  made  bad  spelling  and 
ludicrous  inversions  of  words  and 
sentences  do  duty  for  any  high  form 
of  wit  or  hmnor. 

Random,  Roderick,  hero  of  Smol- 
lett's novel  of  that  name  (1748),  in  the 
main  represents  SmoUett  himself. 
Bom  in  Scotland  and  educated  in  a 
Scotch  university.  Random  is  appren- 
ticed to  an  apothecary;  goes  to  sea 
in  a  King's  ship  as  a  sm-geon's  mate; 
makes  acquaintance  with  all  sorts  of 
odd  characters;  experiences  all  kinds 
of  hardship,  and  is  present  at  the 
attack  on  Carthagena.  Rettuning, 
he  sees  EngUsh  town  life  in  all  its 
varieties  and  something  also  of 
Enghsh  country  life;  forms  a  passion 
for  "  the  belles  lettres,"  and  cultivates 
the  society  of  wits  and  starveling 
poets.  Finally,  after  two  volumes  of 
accidents  and  reverses,  he  is  rewarded 
beyond  his  meagre  deserts  by  the 
possession  of  Narcissa.  Though  en- 
dowed with  some  measure  of  good 
nature  and  generosity,  Roderidc  is 
chiefly  distinguished  by  reckless  liber- 
tinism and  love  of  mischief.  His 
treatment  of  his  devoted  friend  and 
slavish  adherent,  Hugh  Strap  (g.r.), 
is  a  characteristic  example  of  heartless 
ingratitude. 

Raphael,  hero  of  Balzac's  novel. 
La  Peau  de  Chagrin,  an  untranslat- 
able title,  because  Chagrin  involves  a 
pun,  meaning,  as  it  does,  both 
chagreen  and  sorrow.  Hence  in  Eng- 
lish the  book  is  usually  known  as  The 
Wild  Ass's  Skin.  Raphael  comes  into 
possession   of   a   bit   of  parchment, 


which  symbolizes  the  potential  energy 
allotted  to  every  human  being.  Tem- 
perate use  may  make  it  last  through 
a  long  and  useful  career.  Reckless 
egoism  may  exhaust  it  in  a  few  years 
of  feverish  acquisitiveness  or  prodigal 
self-indulgence.  Every  expenditure 
of  will  and  desire  produces  a  shrinkage 
in  the  magic  skin,  which  registers  a 
corresponding  curtailment  of  the 
owner's  life.  Raphael,  starting  with 
the  headlong  desire  to  squander  his 
manhood  in  Sardanapalian  debauch 
as  a  defiance  to  the  powers  that  had 
tortured  his  youth,  no  sooner  com- 
prehends the  relation  of  his  existence 
to  the  talisman  than  he  courts  re- 
trenchment.   But  it  is  too  late. 

Rappacini,  Beatrice,  heroine  of  N. 
Hawthorne's  short  story,  Rappacini' s 
Daughter,  in  Mosses  from  an  Old 
Manse,  has  been  fed  upon  poisons  by 
her  father,  a  cold-blooded  scientist 
in  Padua.  She  grows  up,  immune 
herself,  but  infectious  to  all  animal 
life  that  comes  in  contact  with  her. 
Hawthorne's  American  Notebook,  p. 
209,  contains  the  following  quotation 
from  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  Vulgar 
Errors,  which  shows  where  he  got  his 
hint:  "  A  story  there  passeth  of  an 
Indian  King  that  sent  imto  Alexander 
a  faire  woman  fed  with  aconytes  and 
other  poisons,  with  this  intent  com- 
plexionally  to  destroy  him."  The 
story  has  been  traced  back  through 
the  Gesta  Romanorum,  tale  xi,  to 
Aristotle's  Secretum  Secretorum,  chap, 
xxviii,  where  a  queen  of  India  is  said  to 
have  treacherously  sent  to  Alexander, 
among  other  costly  presents,  pre- 
tended testimonies  of  her  friendship, 
a  girl  of  exquisite  beauty,  who,  having 
been  fed  with  serpents  from  her  in- 
fancy, partook  of  their  nature. 

Rarahu,  heroine  of  a  romantic 
idyl,  The  Marriage  of  Loti  (1880),  by 
L.  M.  J.  Viaud,  who  subsequently 
took  as  his  pseudonym  the  name  he 
had  invented  for  his  hero, — Pierre 
Loti.  A  French  naval  officer,  he 
marries  Rarahu,  a  South  Sea  maiden 
of  14,  beautifiil,  imaginative,  pro- 
foundly enamoured,  and  intelligent 
enough  to  be  saddened  by  the  intel- 
lectual gulf  between  them.    He  loves 


Rasselas 


313 


Rat-wife 


her  in  his  own  selfish  way,  but  is  not 
willing  to  observe  the  moral  rules  he 
lays  down  for  her.  After  his  depar- 
ture she  ceases  not  indeed  to  pine  for 
him,  but  to  be  true  to  his  memory 
and  precepts.  '  She  dies  of  consump- 
tion at  eighteen. 

Rasselas,  in  Samuel  Johnson's 
philosophical  romance,  Rasselas^ 
Prince  of  Abyssinia  (1759),  has  been 
brought  up  in  the  Happy  Valley  of 
Amhara.  He  and  a  sister  Nekayah, 
wearying  of  these  monotonous  joys, 
escape  from  the  valley,  and  under  the 
guidance  of  the  philosopher  Imlac 
seek  for  happiness  in  the  great  world. 
Disenchantment  meets  them  every- 
where— in  the  hollow  revelry  of 
youth;  among  philosophers,  whose 
practices  ill  accord  with  their  theories; 
among  shepherds,  whose  real  lives 
beUe  the  ideals  of  poetry;  through 
crowds,  whose  smiling  faces  mask 
aching  hearts;  in  the  cell  of  the  her- 
mit, who  counts  the  days  when  he 
shall  once  more  mix  with  the  world. 
The  final  disenchantment  occurs 
when  they  return  to  the  Happy  Valley 
and  find  that  even  its  happiness  was 
an  illusion  of  youth. 

Rassendyll,  Rudolf,  hero  of  An- 
thony Hope's  romance.  The  Prisoner 
of  Zenda  (1894),  a  young  Englishman, 
who  inherits  some  of  the  royal  blood 
of  the  rulers  of  Ruritania,  and  comes 
legitimately  by  a  striking  resemblance 
to  King  Rudolf,  his  namesake  and 
kinsman.  The  king  has  been  seized 
by  conspirators  and  imprisoned  in  the 
Castle  of  Zenda.  The  Englishman 
consents  to  personate  him,  and  rules 
in  his  stead  imtil  the  downfall  of  the 
conspirators. 

Rastignac,  Eugene  de,  a  law 
student,  journalist,  and  man  about 
town,  who  appears  in  several  of 
Balzac's  novels.  The  eldest  son  of 
the  Baron  de  Rastignac,  he  was  born 
in  1797,  and  in  18 19  went  to  Paris  to 
study  law.  In  Pdre  Goriot  he  is  the 
lover  of  Mme.  de  Nucingen,  one  of 
Goriot's  daughters;  in  Cousine  Betty 
(1838),  he  marries  Augusta  de  Nucin- 
gen, daughter  of  his  former  mistress, 
whom  he  had  left  five  years  previous. 
In  1845  he  was  raised  to  the  French 


peerage,  with  an  income  of  300,000 
francs.  He  is  clever  and  cynical,  a 
rake  and  a  dandy.  His  favorite 
motto,  "  There  is  no  absolute  virtue; 
it  is  all  a  matter  of  circumstances," 
simis  up  his  moral  code. 

The  man  whose  career  is  most  distinctly 
traced  is  perhaps  Eugene  de  Rastignac, 
whose  first  steps  in  life  we  witness  in  Le 
Ptre  Goriot.  The  picture  is  to  some  extent 
injured  by  Balzac's  incurable  fatuity  and 
snobbishness,  but  the  situation  of  the  young 
man,  well  born,  clever,  and  proud,  who 
comes  up  to  Paris,  equipped  by  his  family's 
savings,  to  seek  his  fortune  and  find  it  at 
any  cost,  and  who  moves  from  the  edge  of 
one  social  abyss  to  the  edge  of  another  (find- 
ing abysses  in  every  shaded  place  he  looks 
into),  until  at  last  his  nerves  are  steeled,  his 
head  steadied,  his  conscience  cased  in  cyni- 
cism, and  his  pockets  filled — all  this  bears 
a  deep '  imaginative  stamp. — Atlantic 
Monthly. 

Ratcliffe,  Senator  (from  Peoria, 
Illinois),  the  principal  character  in  an 
anonymous  novel.  Democracy  (1880), 
now  attributed  to  Henry  Adams.  He 
combines  the  least  admirable  traits 
of  several  well-known  public  men  of 
the  day  (noticeably  James  G.  Blaine), 
all  easily  recognizable. 

No  amount  of  cleverness  In  making  such 
a  character,  consistent  in  itself  and  with  its 
surroundings,  can  make  it  a  truthful  type 
of  the  strong  party  man  of  American  politics. 
Ratcliffe  confesses  to  ballot-box  stuffing  and 
to  having  been  bribed,  and  glories  therein, 
because  his  action  was  for  the  good  of  the 
party.  No  one  needs  to  be  told  that,  how- 
ever great  the  shamelessness  of  some  of  our 
public  men,  to  represent  such  a  man  as  the 
probable  Republican  candidate  for  president 
is  a  perversion  which  must  detract  from  the 
force  of  any  picture  of  American  politics. — 
N.  Y.  Nation,  April  22,  1880. 

In  the  succeeding  July,  Blaine  was 
nominated  for  the  presidency  on  the 
Republican  ticket. 

Rattlin,  Jack,  in  Smollett's  Roderick 
Random,  a  typical  British  tar,  as  Tom 
Bowling  in  the  same  novel  is  a  typical 
naval  ofificer.  Rattlin  the  Reefer, 
hero  of  a  novel  of  that  name  by 
Edward  Howard,  has  often  been  at- 
tributed wrongly  to  Captain  Marryat. 

Rat-wife,  The,  in  Ibsen's  Little 
Eyolf,  a  weird,  witch-like  hag,  lures 
the  child-hero  to  his  death.  William 
Archer  sees  in  her  a  symbol  of  death. 
G.  B.  Shaw  recognizes  her  as  "  the 
divine  messenger,"  who  carries  retri- 
bution into  the  household. 


Ravenshoe 


314 


Rebecca 


There  cannot  be  the  least  doubt,  I  think, 
that  in  the  poet's  mind  the  Rat-wife  is  the 
symbol  of  death,  the  still,  soft  darkness  that 
is  at  once  so  fearful  and  so  fascinating  to 
humanity. — William  Archer,  Preface  to 
English  translation  of  Little  Eyolf. 

Enter  then  our  old  friend,  Ibsen's  divine 
messenger.  The  Rat-wife,  alias  the  Strange 
Passenger,  alias  the  Button  Moulder,  alias 
Ulrik  Brendel,  comes  in  to  ask  whether 
there  are  any  little  gnawing  things  there  of 
which  she  can  rid  the  house.  They  do  not 
understand — the  divine  messenger  in  Ibsen 
never  is  understood,  especially  by  the  critics. 
So  the  little  gnawing  thing  in  the  house — the 
child — follows  the  Rat-wife  and  is  drowned, 
leaving  the  pair  awakened  by  the  blow  to  a 
frightful  consciousness  of  themselves. — 
G.  B.  Shaw:  Views  and  Opinions. 

Ravenshoe,  Charles,  hero  of  Henry 
Kingsley's  novel,  Ravenshoe,  a  gener- 
ous, high-spirited  youth  who  comes 
into  his  own  after  many  vicissitudes. 

Ravenswood,  Edgar,  Master  of, 
hero  of  Scott's  novel,  The  Bride  of 
Lammermoor,  a  melancholy  youth, 
to  whom  his  father,  Allan,  had  be- 
queathed a  legacy  of  vengeance 
against  the  Ashton  family.  His  love 
for  Lucy  Ashton  and  her  father's 
plausible  pretences  calm  his  hatred, 
which  bursts  out  again  with  redoubled 
fury  when  his  engagement  to  her  is 
broken  by  Lucy's  parents.  Unable  to 
realize  the  difficulties  of  her  position 
during  his  absence,  he  himself  dealt 
the  last  blow  to  her  tottering  reason 
and  she  dies  in  convulsions.  On  his 
way  to  a  duel  with  Colonel  Sholto 
Ashton,  her  brother,  he  is  swallowed 
up  by  the  quicksands  of  Kelpies  Flow. 

Ready-Money  Jack,  in  Washing- 
ton Irving's  Bracehridge  Hall,  the 
nickname  of  Jack  Tibbetts,  a  sturdy 
British  yeoman.  "He  saw  to  every- 
thing himself;  put  his  own  hand  to  the 
plow;  worked  hard;  ate  heartily;  slept 
soundly;  paid  for  everything  in  cash 
down;  and  never  danced  except  he 
could  do  it  to  the  music  of  his  own 
money  in  both  pockets.  He  has  never 
been  without  a  hundred  or  two 
pounds  in  gold  about  him,  and  never 
allows  a  debt  to  stand  unpaid.  This 
has  gained  him  his  current  name." 

Ready  Money  Mortiboy,  in  the 
novel  of  that  name  (1872),  by  Walter 
Besant  and  James  Rice,  the  nickname 
given  to  the  chief  character, — ^a  skin- 


flint country  banker,  heir  to  a  race  of 
misers,  with  all  the  stock  attributes 
of  the  miser.  His  prodigal  son,  known 
locally  as  Roaring  Dick,  whom  he  had 
discarded  years  ago,  comes  back,  ap- 
parently prosperous,  but  really  with 
a  determination  to  rob  his  father  by 
inducing  him  to  invest  in  a  non-extant 
Mexican  mine.  One  night  the  old 
man  awakes,  to  find  his  son  rifling  his 
hoard.  He  is  stricken  by  a  paralytic 
stroke,  from  which  he  never  recovers. 
Dick  reforms,  casts  away  his  accom' 
plice  La  Fleur,  becomes  a  model  of  all 
the  virtues,  domestic  and  civic,  and 
is  eventually  shot  by  his  old-time 
partner. 

There  has  recently  died,  at  Northampton, 
Mr.  Charles  Cecil  Becke,  the  borough  coro- 
ner. In  the  obituary  notice  in  The  North- 
ampton Mercury,  it  is  stated  that  his  mother 
"was  a  sister  of  the  late  Mr.  Henry  Billing- 
worth  Whitworth,  who  amassed  a  large  for- 
tune, and  figures  in  Besant  and  Rice's 
famous  novel, — he  was  the  original  of  Ready 
Money  Mortiboy."  It  will  be  recalled  that 
Mr.  James  Rice  was  a  Northampton  man. — 
Notes  and  Queries,  II  S.,  iv,  205. 

Rebecca,  in  Scott's  romance  Ivan- 
hoe,  the  daughter  of  the  Jew,  Isaac  of 
York.  She  is  as  generous  and  self- 
sacrificing  as  her  father  is  avaricious 
and  self-seeking.  She  loves  Ivanhoe, 
but  knows  her  love  is  hopeless. 
Knowing  also  that  Rowena  is  her 
successful  rival,  she  yet  offers  Bois- 
Guilbert  any  sum  he  may  demand  for 
effecting  the  release  of  the  Saxon 
maiden  from  imprisonment  among 
her  enemies.  A  famous  scene  is  that 
in  which  she  defies  the  passion- 
inflamed  Templar  and  threatens  to 
throw  herself  from  the  turret  of  the 
Tower  of  Torquilstone  into  the  court- 
yard. Bois-Guilbert  carries  her  to 
the  preceptory  of  Templestone,  where 
as  a  Jewess  skilled  in  medicine  she  is 
convicted  of  sorcery  and  condemned 
to  the  stake.  Allowed  a  trial  by  com- 
bat she  chooses  Ivanhoe  for  her 
champion.    See  Bois-Guilbert. 

Rebecca  was  suggested  in  part 
by  a  Philadelphia  Jewess,  Rebecca 
Gratz,  whose  character  was  described 
to  Scott  by  Washington  Irving. 

Scott  owed  his  knowledge  of  Rebecca 
Gratz  to  Irving.  On  Irving's  first  visit  to 
Abbottsford  (181 7)  the  two  became  intimate 


Redcliffe 


315 


Rene 


friends.  Irving,  habitually  reticent  as  he 
was  about  the  great  grief  of  his  life,  pres- 
ently told  Scott  of  his  youthful  love  for 
Mathilda  Hoffman.  She  died  at  i8,  but  he 
never  ceased  to  mourn  her,  and  she  never 
found  even  a  temporary  successor  in  his 
heart.  Miss  HoflFman's  most  devoted  friend 
was  Rebecca  Gratz,  of  Philadelphia  (17S1- 
1869).  She  tended  Irving's  betrothed 
through  her  last  illness,  and  Irving  natvirally 
mentioned  her  to  Scott  and  told  her  own 
story.  She  loved  a  Christian,  but  would  not 
marry  him  out  of  loyalty  to  the  ancient  faith, 
and  for  the  rest  of  her  life  devoted  her 
wealth  and  all  her  powers  to  philanthropy. 
When  Scott  finished  Ivanhoe,  two  years 
after  Irving's  visit,  he  wrote:  "How  do  you 
like  your  Rebecca?  Does  the  Rebecca  I 
have  pictured  compare  well  with  the  pattern 
given?" — See  Century,  September,  1882. 

Redcliffe,  Heir  of,  hero  and  title 
of  a  novel  by  Charlotte  Yonge,  which 
once  had  an  immense  vogue,  espe- 
cially among  yoimg  ladies  in  their 
teens. 

The"  hero,  a  yotmg  baronet  of  ancient 
family  and  immense  estate,  was  in  point  of 
character  such  as  no  young  man,whether  gen- 
tle or  simple,  ever  has  been  or  will  be.  But 
It  was  an  undeniably  pretty  and  pathetic 
story,  and  aroused  feminine  sensibility  to 
the  highest  degree.  "Lor,  ma'am!"  an 
Abigail  was  reported  to  have  said  when 
arranging  her  lady's  "things"  in  the  morn- 
ing, "whatever  have  you  been  a-doing  of  to 
your  flounces?"  (those  were  flounce  days). 
"They're  wringing  wet."  She  had  simply 
sat  up  to  finish  The  Heir  of  Redcliffe,  and 
drenched  her  dress  with  her  tears  at  his 
death. — Lippincott's  Magazine. 

Red-cross  Knight,  hero  of  the  first 
book  of  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene 
(1590),  is  meant  for  St.  George, 
patron  of  England.  His  adventures 
typify  the  triumph  of  holiness  over 
sin,  of  truth  over  error,  of  Protestant- 
ism over  "  Popery."  With  Una,  who 
represents  Evangelical  purity  or  unity 
of  faith,  he  starts  out  to  slay  the 
dragon,  but  is  misled  by  Duessa,  a 
double-faced  minx,  who  passes  her- 
self off  as  Fidessa,  or  True  Faith,  and 
lures  him  to  the  palace  of  Lucifera. 
He  is  attacked  and  cast  into  a  dun- 
geon by  Orgoglio,  but  Una  sends 
Arthur  (England)  to  his  rescue. 
Arthur  slays  Orgoglio  and  liberates 
the  Red-cross  Knight,  who  now  re- 
deems himself  by  slaying  the  dragon, 
and  then  finds  his  way  to  Una  whom 
he  marries. 

Redgauntlet,  Sir  Edward  Hugh, 
hero    of    Scott's    novel    Redgauntlet 


(1824).  A  Jacobite,  unyielding,  un- 
bending, loving  fiercely  as  he  hated 
fiercely,  his  love  depended  on  sub- 
mission to  his  will.  Even  when  he 
retired  to  a  convent  as  Father  Hugo, 
he  never  forgot  and  never  repented 
the  past,  and  died  with  his  silver  box 
about  his  neck  bearing  the  legend 
Haud  obliviscendum.  He  had  a 
strange  physical  peculiarity — the 
mark  of  his  family.  He  possessed  the 
power  of  contracting  his  forehead  into 
a  frown,  in  the  lines  of  which  the 
shape  of  a  horse-shoe  might  be  traced. 
Sir  Hugh  was  modelled  from  Scott's 
intimate  friend  the  fifth  Sir  Robert 
Grierson,  who  died  in  1839,  aged  102. 

Redlaw,  the  Haunted  Man,  in 
Dickens's  story  so  entitled.  Seeking 
to  forget  his  own  sorrows,  he  loses  for 
a  time  his  sympathy  with  the  sorrows 
of  others. 

Regan,  in  Shakespeare's  King 
Lear,  one  of  the  monarch's  ungrateful 
daughters.    See  Goneril. 

Reignier,  duke  of  Lorraine  and 
Anjou  and  titular  king  of  Naples,  in 
Shakespeare's  Henry  VI,  three  parts. 
This  is  Shakespeare's  spelling  of  Ren6 
(q.v.).  Suffolk  describes  his  titles  and 
influence  in  Act  v,  5. 

Remus,  Uncle,  an  old  plantation 
negro,  shrewd  and  humorous,  whose 
mind  is  stored  with  beast  fables  that 
always  find  a  moral  application 
among  his  hearers.  He  is  the  feigned 
narrator  of  the  plantation  and  folk- 
lore tales  collected  by  Joel  Chandler 
Harris  and  published  in  Uncle  Remus 
(1881),  Nights  with  Uncle  Remus 
(1883),  Uncle  Remus  and  his  Friends 
(1892). 

Ren6  (called  Reignier  by  Shake- 
speare), duke  of  Anjou  and  titular 
king  of  Naples,  appears  in  all  three 
parts  of  Henry  VI,  and  also  in  Scott's 
historical  romance,  Anne  of  Geier stein. 

Rene,  the  autobiographic  hero  of 
a  romance  of  that  name,  forming  an 
episode  in  the  prose  epic  Les  Natchez, 
by  Frangois  Ren6  Chateaubriand.  It 
was  published  separately  in  1807. 
Ren6  is  a  sort  of  French  Werther  and 
the  precursor  of  the  "  grand,  gloomy, 
and  peculiar "  heroes  with  whom 
Byron  identified  himself.    Chauteau- 


Rennepont 


316 


Richard  II 


briand  specifically  accused  Byron  of 
unacknowledged  plagiarism.  Ren6, 
in  the  haughty  pride,  isolation,  and 
contempt  for  civilization  which  has 
driven  him  to  consort  with  savages 
(see  also  LocksleyHall),  isevidently 
Chauteaubriand's  reminiscence  of  his 
own  stormy  and  moody  youth.  The 
central  episode,  an  unholy  passion 
felt  for  him  by  his  sister,  probably 
suggested  Manfred  to  Byron. 

Ren6  might  surely  claim  some  part  in  the 
creation  of  that  one  single  person  who  had 
appeared  in  the  various  characters  of  Childe 
Harold,  Conrad,  Lara,  Manfred,  and  the 
Giaour.  The  question  which  troubled  Cha- 
teaubriand can  perhaps  be  answered  by 
those  who  have  studied  the  Byron  mystery, 
and  are  acquainted  with  Ren6,  with  the 
chapter  in  the  Genie  du  Christianisme  en- 
titled Du  Vague  des  passions,  and  with  the 
Defense  du  Ginie  du  Christianisme — those 
passages  of  it  especially  which  tell  how 
Chateaubriand  had  fought  against  the  hu- 
mour that  possessed  the  young  men  of  his 
time  to  be  guilty  and  gloomy  after  the 
fashion  of  Rousseau  and  Werther,  and  those 
other  passages  which  sum  up  the  character 
of  Ren6,  and  mark  the  diflEerent  doom  as- 
signed to  him  and  to  his  repentant  victim. 
Byron  persistently  abstained  from  acknowl- 
edging any  obligation  to  Ren6.  A  reason 
will  suggest  itself  to  those  who  consult  the 
books,  and  we  will  not  unnecessarily  dilate 
upon  the  hateful  theme. — Saturday  Review. 

Rennepont,  Count,  in  Sue's  Wan- 
dering Jew,  a  descendant  of  Herodias, 
sister  of  the  Wandering  Jew.  A  cen- 
tury and  a  half  before  the  story  opens 
he  had  professed  Catholicism  in  order 
to  save  his  property  from  confiscation. 
The  ruse  was  discovered  and  the 
whole  estate  was  given  to  the  Jesuits. 
He  succeeded  in  saving  150,000 
francs,  which  he  put  out  at  interest 
for  150  years,  and  it  is  the  fate  of  this 
fund  and  of  its  claimants  that  makes 
up  the  story. 

Revere,  Paul,  a  famous  loyalist  in 
the  American  Revolution,  hero  of  a 
ballad  by  Longfellow,  The  Midnight 
Ride  of  Paul  Revere  (1863).  Revere 
rode  from  Boston  to  Concord  by  night 
(April  18,  1775),  to  notify  the  colo- 
nists of  an  intended  British  raid  on  the 
morrow.  The  details  of  the  ride  as 
presented  by  Longfellow  are  subjects 
of  dispute  among  historians,  but  the 
main  fact  remains  unshaken. 

Riccabocca,  Dr.,inBulwer-Lytton's 
My  Novel,  an  intimate  friend  of  the 


Caxton  family,  an  Italian  philosopher 
— a  soft-hearted  cynic,  whose  attri- 
butes are  a  large  pipe,  a  red  lunbrella, 
and  an  inexhaustible  stock  of  Mac- 
chiavellian  proverbs. 

Richard  Ccbut  de  Lion,  son  of 
Henry  II  and  afterward  the  crusader 
king  of  England,  appears  in  three  of 
Scott's  novels,  The  Betrothed  (1825), 
The  Talisman  (1825),  and  Ivanhoe 
(1820).  In  the  first  he  accompanies 
his  father  to  the  siege  of  the  Castle  of 
Garde  Doloureuse  and  takes  it  by 
storm.  In  The  Talisman  he  is  chief 
of  the  allied  princes  arrayed  against 
Saladin  in  Palestine,  but  his  arrogance, 
recklessness,  and  impatience  breed 
discord  in  the  Christian  camps,  which 
ends  in  the  abandonment  of  the  enter- 
prise. "  Alas,"  says  one  of  the  char- 
acters, "  that  a  creature  so  noble  as 
thou  art,  so  accomplished  in  princely 
thoughts  and  princely  daring,  so 
fitted  to  honor  Christendom  by  thy 
actions  and  in  thy  calmer  mood  to 
rule  it  by  thy  wisdom,  should  yet 
have  the  brute  and  wild  fury  of  the 
lion  mingled  with  the  dignity  and 
courage  of  that  king  of  the  forest!  " 

In  Ivanhoe  Richard,  disguised  as 
the  Black  Knight  of  the  Fetterlock, 
successfully  intervenes  to  help  Ivan- 
hoe at  a  critical  moment  in  the  pas- 
sage-of-arms  at  Ashby  de  la  Zouch, 
and  afterwards  directed  the  attack  of 
Locksley  and  his  men  on  Front-de- 
Boeuf 's  castle. 

Richard  II  (bom  1367,  king  of 
England  1377-99),  the  eighth  king  of 
the  house  of  Plantagenet,  is  the  hero 
of  the  play  by  Shakespeare  named 
after  him.  He  is  introduced  in  the 
first  scene,  where  two  nobles  submit 
their  differences  to  him  for  decision. 
The  germs  of  all  after  events  lie  com- 
pact in  his  insincerity,  partiality, 
and  arbitrary  self-will,  and  in  the 
proud,  tempestuous  barons,  who  mo- 
mentarily succumb.  In  Act  iv,  Sc.  i, 
he  resign^  the  crown  and  is  sent  to  the 
Tower;  in  v,  5,  he  is  killed  by  Exton. 

Richard,  although  possessed  of  a  certain 
regal  charm  and  power  of  attaching  tender 
natures  to  himself,  is  deficient  in  all  that  is 
sterling  and  real  in  manhood.  He  is  self- 
indulgent,  has  much  superficial  sensitiveness, 
loves    to    contemplate   in    a  romantic  way 


Richard  III 


317 


Richmond 


whatever  is  romantic  or  passionate  in  life, 
possesses  a  kind  of  rhetorical  imagination, 
and  has  abundant  command  of  delicate  and 

f [learning  words.  His  will  is  nerveless,  he  is 
ncapable  of  consistency  of  feeling,  incapable 
of  strenuous  action. — Hazlitt. 

Richard  m,  in  Shakespeare's  his- 
torical tragedy  of  that  name  (i597). 
is  first  introduced  to  us  as  Richard 
Plantagenet,  duke  of  Gloucester,  in 
the  two  parts  of  Henry  VI,  becoming 
king  in  Part  ii,  Act  iv. 

Shakespeare's  plot  is  founded  upon 
the  chronicles  of  Hollingshed  and 
Hall,  with  Httle  indebtedness  to  two 
older  plays.  The  True  Tragedie  of 
Richard  the  Third  and  Richardius 
Teriius,  the  latter  written  in  Latin 
by  Thomas  Legge.  Shakespeare's 
play  takes  up  English  history  where 
///  Henry  VI  had  left  it,  after  the 
battle  of  Tewkesbiiry  in  1 47 1 ,  and  ends 
with  the  fall  of  Richard  at  Bosworth 
in  1485. 

There  is  something  sublime  and  terrible 
in  so  great  and  fierce  a  human  energy  as  that 
of  Richard,  concentrated  within  one  with- 
ered and  distorted  body.  This  is  the  evil 
offspring  and  flower  of  the  long  and  cruel 
civil  wars — this  distorted  creature,  a  hater 
and  scorner  of  men,  an  absolute  cynic,  love- 
less and  alone,  disregarding  all  human  bonds 
and  human  affections,  yet  full  of  intellect, 
of  fire,  of  power. — E.  Dowden:  Shakespeare 
Primer. 

In  no  other  play  of  Shakespeare's,  we  may 
sorely  say,  is  the  leading  character  so  pre- 
dominant as  here.  He  absorbs  almost  the 
whole  of  the  interest,  and  it  is  a  triumph  of 
Shakespeare's  art  that  he  makes  us,  in  spite 
of  everything,  follow  him  with  sympathy. 
This  is  partly  because  several  of  his  victims 
are  so  worthless  that  their  fate  seems  well 
deserved.  Anne's  weakness  deprives  her  of 
our  sympathy,  and  Richard's  crime  loses 
something  of  its  horror  when  we  see  how 
lightly  it  is  forgiven  by  the  one  who  ought 
to  take  it  most  to  heart.  In  spite  of  all  his 
Iniquities  he  has  wit  and  courage  on  his 
side — a  wit  which  sometimes  rises  to  Meph- 
istophelean humor,  a  courage  which  does  not 
fail  him  even  in  the  moment  of  disaster,  but 
sheds  a  glory  over  his  fall  which  is  lacking 
to  the  coldly  correct  opponent.  However 
false  and  hypocritical  he  may  be  towards 
others,  he  is  no  hypocrite  to  himself.  He  is 
chemically  free  from  self-delusion. — George 
Brandes:  William  Shakespeare,  A  Critical 
Study  (1898). 

Richard,  Poor,  the  pseudonym 
under  which  Benjamin  Franklin 
issued  a  series  of  almanacs  (1732- 
1757)-    They  were  distingiiished  for 


the  "  wise  saws  and  modem  in- 
stances "  with  which  they  abounded. 
Richard  Saunders  was  the  full  name 
of  the  supposed  author  of  the 
almanacs. 

Richelieu,  Armand  Jean  de  Plessis, 
Duke  of  (1585-1642),  made  a  cardinal 
in  1622,  a  famous  French  statesman, 
who  was  minister  to  Louis  XIII  from 
1624  until  his  death.  His  policy 
strengthened  the  power  of  the  crown 
and  weakened  that  of  the  nobles.  He 
figures  in  De  Vigny's  romance,  Cinq 
Mars  (1826);  in  Bulwer-Lytton's 
drama,  Richelieu,  or  the  Conspiracy 
(1839);  in  many  of  Dimias's romances, 
notably  in  the  Vicomte  de  Bragelonne; 
in  G.  P.  R.  James's  romance,  Richelieu 
(1829),  and  in  Stanley  Weyman's 
romance.  Under  the  Red  Robe  (1894) 
and  its  dramatization.  De  Vigny, 
who  has  been  more  or  less  followed 
by  the  others,  paints  Richelieu  as  he 
appeared  to  the  contemporary  French 
nobles — the  organizer,  with  Father 
Joseph  and  Laubardemont,  of  espion- 
age and  assassination — and  also  in 
his  better  self  as  the  masterful  im- 
crowned  king  of  France,  sending  his 
crowned  manikin  to  the  front  to  fight 
like  any  obscure  captain,  while  he 
himself  planned  the  victories  that 
set  France  at  the  head  of  Europe. 

Richmond,  Harry,  in  Meredith's 
novel,  The  Adventures  of  Harry  Rich- 
mond, is  a  sort  of  shuttlecock  for  his 
father  and  his  maternal  grandfather, 
each  determined  to  set  him  on  the 
right  path.  The  father,  Roy  Rich- 
mond, believes  himself  the  legitimate 
son  of  a  royal  personage;  his  friends 
believe  him  to  be  the  son,  but  ille- 
gitimate. No  intimation  is  given  as 
to  the  truth  of  either  theory,  nor 
whether,  if  untrue,  Roy  Richmond  is 
a  conscious  swindler  or  a  mono- 
maniac. The  author  rather  suggests 
the  former,  the  reader  may  incline  to 
the  latter  and  more  charitable  view. 
In  fine  contrast  to  the  visionary 
father  is  the  solid,  earthly  grand- 
father, Squire  Beltham,— a  rich,  posi- 
tive, passionate,  swearing  old  English 
squire,  "  acred  up  to  his  lips,  consolled 
up  to  his  chin,"  but  distin^ished 
above  his  class  by  the  real  luadity  of 


Ridd 


318 


Rikki-Tikki-TaTi 


his  business  mind,  and  therefore  pos- 
sessed with  a  double  intensity  of 
loathing  for  the  hollow  scheming  and 
visionary  pretensions  of  the  son-in- 
law  he  had  never  welcomed. 

Ridd,  John,  hero  of  R.  D.  Black- 
more's  novel,  Lorna  Doone  (187 1), 
who  falls  in  love  with  and  marries  the 
titular  heroine.  He  is  a  man  of  the 
moors  and  fields,  with  all  the  yeo- 
man's cares  in  his  mind;  but,  if  slow 
to  think,  he  is  quick  to  act;  if  plain 
and  unlettered,  he  is  courageous  and 
chivalric,  and  Lorna  welcomes  his 
placid  strength. 

Riderhood,  Roger  or  Rogue,  in 
Dickens's  novel,  Our  Mutual  Friend 
(1864),  a  river  thief  and  longshore- 
man, who  accuses  Gaffer  Hexam.  His 
daughter,  Pleasant,  keeps  an  unli- 
censed pawnshop. 

That  unfragrant  and  unsanitary  waif  of 
Its  [The  Thames's]  rottenest  refuse,  the 
incomparable  Rogue  Riderhood,  must 
always  hold  a  chosen  place  among  the 
choicest  villains  of  our  selectest  acquaint- 
ance. When  the  genius  of  his  immortal 
creator  said,  "Let  there  be  Riderhood"  and 
there  was  Riderhood,  a  figure  of  coequal 
immortality  rose,  reeking  and  skulking 
Into  sight. — Swinburne:  Charles  Dickens, 
p.  60. 

Ridley,  John  James,  called  J.J.  in 
Thackeray's  novel.  The  Newcomes,  a 
sickly,  deformed  youth,  sensitive  and 
imaginative,  a  fellow-student  and  a 
great  friend  of  Clive  Newcome.  He 
reappears  in  Philip,  and  shows  similar 
affection  and  devotion  for  that  gentle- 
man and  his  wife. 

Riel,  Herve,  titular  hero  of  a  ballad 
(1871)  by  Robert  Browning,  which  is 
based  on  historic  fact.  Riel,  a  Breton 
sailor,  was  in  Louis  XIV's  navy, 
when  the  French  fleet  of  44  sail,  on 
May  31,  1692,  attacked  the  combined 
English  and  Dutch  fleet  of  99  sail,  off 
Cape  La  Hogue  in  the  English  Chan- 
nel. The  French  held  their  own  until 
nightfall,  when  they  headed  for 
France.  Twenty-two  ships  arrived 
off  St.  Malo,  with  the  EngHsh  in  hot 
pursuit,  the  others  having  been  run 
ashore  and  annihilated.  No  pilot 
could  guide  them  into  the  security  of 
the  roadstead  until  Riel  offered  his 
assistance  and  gallantly  achieved  the 
feat.    So  little  did  he  value  his  services 


that,  when  told  to  name  his  reward, 
he  asked  for  a  day's  leave  of  absence 
to  visit  his  wife  in  his  native  village 
of  La  Croisic,  South  Brittany.  On 
Easter  Monday,  191 2,  a  statue  to  the 
memory  of  Riel  was  unveiled  in  La 
Croisic. 

Rienzi,  Cola  di,  an  historical  per- 
sonage who  temporarily  restored  the 
old  Roman  system  of  government  and 
constituted  himself  the  tribune  of  the 
people.  His  project  failed;  in  1354 
he  was  assassinated.  Bulwer-Lytton 
has  made  him  the  hero  of  an  historical 
romance,  Rienzi ^  the  Last  of  the  Tri- 
bunes (1835). 

Rigby,  The  Right  Hon.  Nicholas, 
in  DisraeU's  novel,  Coningsby,  a 
fawning,  plotting,  insolent  man-of- 
all-dirty-work.  He  was  immediately 
recognized  as  a  portrait  of  John 
Wilson  Croker.     See  Wenham. 

Rigdum  Funnidos,  in  Carey's  bur- 
lesque, Chrononhotonthologos,  a  cour- 
tier in  the  palace  of  the  titular  mon- 
arch, also  a  nickname  bestowed  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott  on  his  friend  John 
Ballantyne. 

Rigoletto,  hero  and  title  of  an 
Italian  opera,  libretto  by  Piave  and 
music  by  Giovanni  Verdi,  first  pro- 
duced at  Venice  March  11,  1851. 
The  plot  is  from  Hugo's  Le  Roi 
S'amuse.  The  scene  is  transported 
from  Paris  to  Mantua,  and  the  names 
of  the  dramatis  personae  are  changed, 
so  that  Francis  I  becomes  the  Duke 
of  Mantua,  Triboulet  becomes  Rigo- 
letto, Saint  Vallier  becomes  the  count 
of  Monterone,  etc.  But  the  change 
of  names  entails  no  change  of  char- 
acters, and  the  situations,  though 
toned  down  in  parts,  remain  sub- 
stantially the  same.  The  name 
Rigoletto  is  taken,  with  the  altera- 
tion of  a  single  letter,  from  the  vaude- 
ville of  Rigoletti,  or  the  Last  of  the 
Fools,  by  Jaime  and  Alboize,  one  of 
the  many  dramatic  variations  of 
Hugo's  work. 

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,  in  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling's Jungle  Books  (1894  and  1895), 
a  mongoose,  the  pet  of  a  small  Eng- 
lish boy  in  India,  who  twice  saves  the 
lad's  life  and  once  the  lives  of  his 
father  and  mother  and  so  "  fights  his 


Rinaldo 


319 


Robin  of  Bagshot 


way  gallantly  enough  into  the  list  of 
Mr.  Kipling's  immortals"  {London 
AthencBum). 

Rinaldo,  a  famous  character  in 
mediaeval  romance,  one  of  the  four 
sons  of  Aymon  and  one  of  the  greatest 
of  Charlemagne's  paladins.  He  ap- 
pears as  Renaud  or  Regnault  de  Mon- 
tauhau  in  the  French  romances, 
but  the  Italian  form  Rinaldo  came 
into  general  acceptance  through  the 
influence  of  Pulci,  Ariosto,  and 
Tasso. 

In  Orlando  Furioso  (1516)  Ariosto 
makes  him  the  rival  of  his  cousin 
Oriando  for  the  love  of  Angelica,  who 
will  have  nothing  to  do  with  him. 
Tasso  chose  him  as  the  hero  of  a 
juvenile  epic,  Rinaldo  (1562),  now 
practically  forgotten  but  once  of 
great  vogue.  This  gathers  together 
and  synthetizes  his  various  exploits 
against  giants,  enchanters,  and  Sara- 
cen kings,  his  dallyings  with  Queen 
Floriana,  whom  he  forsook  as  iEneas 
forsook  Calypso,  and  his  more  en- 
during love  for  Clarice,  daughter  of 
the  iiSidel  king  Mambrino,  whom  he 
finally  wins  and  weds. 

Rizpah,  poem  by  Tennyson.  The 
modem  Rizpah,  dying,  tells  a  lady 
who  is  visiting  her  how  her  son  Willy, 
being  dared  to  the  feat  by  his  wild 
mates,  robbed  the  mail,  took  one 
purse,  with  the  contents  of  which  he 
refused  to  meddle?  and  was  hanged 
for  the  deed.  There  are  great  pathos 
and  power  in  the  description  of  her 
last  meeting  with  him,  and  in  her 
tale  of  her  subsequent  insanity,  and 
of  her  secretly  burying  his  bones 
in  holy  ground.  See  Rizpah  in 
vol.  II. 

Never  since  the  very  beginning  of  all 
poetry  were  the  twin  passions  of  terror  and 
pity  more  divinely  done  into  deathless  words 
or  set  to  more  perfect  and  profound  mag- 
nificence of  music;  never  more  inseparably 
fused  and  harmonized  into  more  absolute 
and  sublime  identity.  The  poet  never  lived 
on  earth — such  at  least  is  my  humble  and 
hearty  conviction — whose  glory  would  not 
be  heightened  by  the  attribution  of  this 
poem  to  his  hands.  Thousands  of  readers 
for  centuries  to  come,  will  be  moved  by  it 
to  trembling  and  to  tears. — Swinburne. 

Robarts,  Lucy,  in  Anthony  Trol- 
lope's     novel,      Framley     Parsonage 


(1861).    Sister  of  the  vicar,  she  loves 
and  marries  Lord  Lufton. 

I  think  myself  that  Lucy  Robarts  is  per- 
haps the  most  natural  English  girl  that  I 
ever  drew, — the  most  natural,  at  any  rate. 
of  those  who  have  been  good  girls.  She  was 
not  as  dear  to  me  as  Kate  Woodward  in 
The  Three  Clerks,  but  I  think  she  is  more 
like  real  human  life. — Anthony  Trollope: 
An  Autobiography,  p.  125. 

Robarts,  the  Rev.  Mr.,  vicar  of 
Framley,  in  Anthony  Trollope 's  novel, 
Framley  Parsonage,  a  weak  man, 
naturally  honest,  who  runs  unneces- 
sarily into  debt  and  is  involved  in 
difficulties  that  affect  his  honor. 

Robert  of  Paris,  Count,  hero  of 
Scott's  romance  of  that  name  (1831), 
a  French  nobleman  who,  with  his  wife 
Brenhilda,  has  joined  the  first  Cru- 
sade (1096- 1099),  is  present  in  the 
camp  of  the  emperor  Alexius  Com- 
menus  at  Scutari,  and  takes  part  in 
the  siege  and  capture  of  Constanti- 
nople.   See  Hereward. 

Robin,  Fanny,  in  Thomas  Hardy's 
novel,  Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd 
(1875),  a  country  girl  seduced  by 
Sergeant  Troy. 

She  appears  only  three  times, — once 
when  she  meets  Oak  on  the  night  of  the  fire 
when  she  is  running  away  from  home;  a 
second  time,  wandering  all  alone  by  the 
riverside  in  the  dark  winter  night,  and 
attempting  to  attract  Troy's  attention  by 
feebly  throwing  little  fragments  of  snow  at 
his  barrack-room  window  "till  the  wall  must 
have  become  pimpled  with  the  adhering 
lumps  of  snow;"  and  a  third  time  struggling 
faintly  and  with  faltering  steps  to  the  work- 
house, when  her  exhausted  nature  could 
scarce  support  the  weight  of  the  wretched 
burden  it  had  to  bear.  The  author  has  put 
out  his  whole  force  in  the  description  of 
these  last  two  incidents.  The  first  is  original. 
The  second  may  have  been  suggested  by  the 
well-known  chapter  in  Adam  Bede  entitled 
"The  Journey  in  Despair."  But,  whether 
so  suggested  or  not,  it  stands  comparison 
not  unfairly  even  with  that  most  painful 
narrative  of  the  shipwreck  of  a  girl's  life. — 
Saturday  Review. 

Robin  of  Bagshot,  in  The  Beggar's 
Opera  (1728),  by  John  Gay,  one  of 
Macheath's  gang  of  robbers.  He  was 
evidently  designed  to  represent  Sir 
Robert  Walpole's  unrefined  manners, 
convivial  temper  and  alleged  robbery 
of  the  public.  Robin  was  provided 
with  both  a  wife  and  a  mistress,  to 
indicate  to  the  public  that  Lady  Wal- 
pole  had  a  rival  in  Miss  Skerrell. 


Robinson 


320 


Roderick 


Robinson,  Hyacinth,  in  Henry 
James's  Princess  Casamassima  (1886) 
the  illegitimate  son  of  the  profligate 
Lord  Frederick  and  an  ignorant 
Frenchwoman,  who  is  reared  by  a 
poor  dressmaker  among  forlorn  east- 
side  people  in  London.  Though  his 
instincts  are  aristocratic,  his  sym- 
pathies are  with  the  down-trodden. 
Falling  an  easy  prey  for  workingmep 
of  socialistic  views,  he  promises,  if 
called  upon,  to  perform  an  act  that 
may  cost  him  his  life.  It  is  in  this 
mood  that  he  meets  Princess  Casa- 
massima. 

Robinson,  Sergeant,  hero  of  John 
Pendleton  Kennedy's  historical  ro- 
mance of  the  Revolutionary  war, 
Horshoe  Robinson  (1836),  so-called 
after  the  hero's  nickname,  given  him 
from  his  trade  as  a  farrier  and  from 
the  returning  sweep  of  a  river  near 
his  own  farm.  He  is  a  stalwart,  long- 
headed, large-hearted  man,  with  a 
quiet,  dry  humor  and  a  preternatural 
acuteness,  which,  joined  to  his  train- 
ing as  a  backwoodsman,  a  hunter, 
and  a  soldier,  enable  him  to  outwit 
the  villains.  These  are  an  English 
captain,  St.  Jermyn,  who  assumes 
the  name  of  Tyrrel,  and  Sergeant 
Curry,  a  kind  of  darker  Bothwell, 
whom  St.  Jermyn  instigates  to  vari- 
ous plots  and  stratagems  against  the 
heroine's  father,  a  Tory  planter 
named  Lindsay. 

Robinson,  What  Mr.,  thinks,  the 
third  of  the  Biglow  Papers  by  J.  R. 
Lowell.  The  circumstances  which 
gave  rise  to  it  were  as  follows:  In 
1855  the  anti-slavery  party  intended 
to  start  Governor  Briggs,  of  Massa- 
chusetts, for  the  presidency,  in  oppo- 
sition to  General  Cass,  the  candidate 
of  the  Democrats,  and  General 
Taylor,  the  (ultimately  successful) 
candidate  of  the  Whigs.  Mr.  John  P. 
Robinson,  a  country  lawyer,  then 
commenced-  a  political  tour  of  the 
State,  for  the  purpose  of  discrediting 
Briggs  and  seconding  Cass.  The 
recruiting  sergeants  and  the  place- 
hunting  politicians,  who  used  always 
to  accompany  them,  were  denomi- 
nated by  Mr.  Robinson  "  the  apos- 
tles of  American  destiny." 


Roche,  La,  hero  of  The  Story  of  La 
Roche,  by  Henry  Mackenzie,  a  tale 
founded  on  fact.  La  Roche  was  a 
Swiss  pastor  who,  with  his  daughter 
Margaret,  was  befriended  in  sickness 
and  poverty  by  David  Hume.  Three 
years  later  Hume  was  invited  to 
Berne  to  attend  Margaret's  wedding 
to  a  young  Swiss  ofBcer.  He  arrived 
to  find  both  bride  and  bridegroom 
dead.  The  officer  had  been  shot  in  a 
duel;  the  maiden  had  succvmibed  to 
grief.  Hume,  the  arch-infidel,  is 
represented  as  greatly  touched  by 
the  Christian  faith  that  sustained  the 
old  pastor  in  his  bereavement. 

Rochester,  Edward  Fairfax,  in  Miss 
Bronte's  Jane  Eyre  (1847),  ferocious 
and  brutal  in  manner  and  bearing, 
but  with  an  inner  core  of  kindliness. 
The  author's  intent  was  to  paint  a 
strong  nature,  soured  into  cynicism 
by  experience,  who  addresses  the 
wondering  and  horrified  yet  admiring 
little  governess  from  the  height — or 
depth — of  his  worldly  wisdom. 

Mr.  Rochester  has  imposed  upon  a  good 
many  people;  and  he  is  probably  responsible 
in  part  for  some  of  the  muscular  heroes  who 
have  appeared  since  his  time  in  the  world 
of  fiction.  I  must,  however,  admit  that,  in 
spite  of  some  opposing  authority,  he  does 
not  appear  to  me  to  be  a  real  character  at 
all,  except  as  a  reflection  of  a  certain  side  of 
his  creator.  He  is  in  reality  the  personifica- 
tion of  a  true  woman's  longing  (may  one 
say  it  now?)  for  a  strong  master.  But  the 
knowledge  is  wanting.  He  is  a  very  bold 
but  necessarily  unsuccessful  attempt  at  an 
impossibility.  The  parson's  daughter  did 
not  really  know  anything  about  the  class 
of  which  he  is  supposed  to  be  a  type,  and 
he  remains  vague  and  inconsistent  in  spite 
of  all  his  vigor. — LESLIE  Stephen:  Hours 
in  a  Library. 

Rockminster,  Lady,  in  Thackeray's 
Pendennis,  a  rigorous  old  woman  of 
the  great  world,  with  as  much  kind- 
ness as  character,  with  whom  Laura 
Bell  goes  to  live  after  the  death  of 
Mrs.  Pendennis. 

Roderick,  thirty-fourth  and  last  of 
the  Gothic  kings  of  Spain,  the  centre 
of  a  cycle  of  legends  that  have  been 
utilized  by  Robert  Southey  in  an 
epic  poem,  Roderick,  the  Last  of  the 
Goths  (1824),  which  begins  with 
history  and  ends  in  pure  fable.  In 
a  moment  of  frenzy  Roderick  has 


Roderigo 


321 


Romeo 


violated  Florinda,  the  daughter  of 
Count  Julian.  Julian  renounces 
Christianity,  heads  the  Moors  in  an 
invasion  of  Spain,  and  drives  Roder- 
ick from  his  throne.  Hiimiliated, 
repentant,  he  accepts  his  defeat  as  a 
punishment  for  his  crime  and  flees  in 
peasant  costume  to  the  seaside. 
After  a  year  of  solitary  penance,  a 
vision  rouses  him  to  action,  not  to 
regain  his  throne,  but  to  save  his 
country.  He  is  so  changed  by  suffer- 
ing that  he  fights  unrecognized  until 
the  crisis  of  the  battle  of  Covadango, 
when  he  rushes  furiously  on  the 
enemy  with  his  old  war-cry,  "  Rod- 
erick the  Goth!  Roderick  and  vic- 
tory! "  to  the  inspiration  of  his  fol- 
lowers, who  cut  the  Moors  to  pieces. 
Then  Roderick  disappears  forever. 

Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  The  Vision  of 
Don  Roderick  (1811),  modernizes  the 
legend  of  Roderick's  dream.  He 
makes  this  occur  in  an  ancient  vault 
in  Toledo,  presided  over  by  an  oracle, 
where  there  is  unveiled  to  him  a  pro- 
phetic panorama  of  Spanish  history 
from  his  own  times  to  those  of  Bona- 
parte and  Wellesley. 

Roderigo,  in  Shakespeare's  Othello, 
a  Venetian  youth,  surreptitiously  in 
love  with  Desdemona  and  hating 
Othello  as  a  successful  rival,  whose 
weaknesses  are  taken  advantage  of 
by  lago. 

Roderigo 's  suspicious  credulity,  and  im- 
patient submission  to  the  cheats  which  he 
sees  practised  upon  him,  and  which  by  per- 
suasion he  suffers  to  be  repeated,  exhibit  a 
strong  picture  of  a  weak  mind  betrayed  by 
unlawful  desires  to  a  false  friend. — Samuel 
Johnson:  General  Observations  on  Shake- 
speare's Plays  (1768). 

Roehampton,  Lord,  in  Lord  Bea- 
consfield's  political  novel  Endymion 
(1880),  is  evidently  intended  for 
Lord  Palmerston.  He  marries  En- 
dymion's  sister  Myra. 

Scarcely  any  attempt  is  made  to  distin- 
guish Lord  Roehampton  from  Lord  Palmer- 
ston except  in  the  details  of  private  life.  In 
the  ministry  of  Lord  Melbourne  Lord  Roe- 
hampton is  foreign  secretary,  and  in  that 
capacity  he  projects  and  executes  the  Syrian 
expedition  of  1840.  Lord  Beaconsfield 
regards  with  admiration,  and  almost  with 
tenderness,  the  statesman  whom  he  long 
opposed  with  untiring  energy,  but  always 


with  chivalrous  courtesy.  In  accordance 
with  his  uniform  practice,  he  disregards 
political  differences  which  were,  in  fact, 
purely  conventional.  It  pleases  him  to 
imagine  the  influence  of  such  a  character 
over  a  wife  much  younger  than  himself,  who 
had  originally  accepted  his  hand  for  reasons 
of  convenience,  and  especially  in  the  hope 
of  serving  her  twin  brother  Endymion. — 
Saturday  Review. 

Rolla,  Jacques,  hero  of  Alfred  de 
Musset's  poem  Rolla.  He  is  the 
only  legitimate  child  of  a  foolish 
father,  who  has  brought  him  up 
without  occupation  and  left  him  an 
orphan  at  nineteen,  without  means 
enough  to  support  existence  on  the 
only  terms  he  considers  endurable. 
Jacques  accordingly  divides  his 
patrimony  into  three  portions,  deter- 
mined that  each  should  serve  for  a 
year  of  debauchery  and  that,  all 
being  ended,  he  would  kill  himself. 
His  last  night  on  earth  he  spends  with 
a  girl  still  innocent  who  has  been 
trained  for  a  life  of  shame.  He  dis- 
covers that  she  is  an  illegitimate 
sister  and  kills  her  and  himself. 

Rolleston,  Helen,  heroine  of  Foul 
Play  (1868),  a  novel  by  Charles 
Reade  and  Dion  Boucicault. 

Being  a  character  of  Mr.  Reade's  creation, 
it  is  not  necessary  to  say  that  Helen  Rolles- 
ton is  a  very  natural  and  lovable  woman, 
admirably  illogical,  cruel,  sagacious,  and 
generous.  Through  all  her  terrible  disasters 
and  thrilling  adventures  she  is  always  a 
young  lady,  and  no  more  abandoned  on  that 
far-away  island,  by  her  exquisite  breeding 
and  the  pretty  conventions  of  her  English 
girlhood,  than  she  would  be  on  her  native 
croquet-ground.  A  delicious  charm  is  gained 
to  the  romance  by  the  retention  of  these 
society  instincts  and  graces,  which  are  made 
to  harmonize  rather  than  conflict  with  the 
exhibitions  of  a  woman's  greatness  and  self- 
devotion,  when  occasion  calls  forth  those 
qualities. — Atlantic  Monthly,  August,  1868. 

Romeo,  hero  of  Shakespeare's 
tragedy  Romeo  and  Juliet  (1598), 
more  or  less  founded  on  fact  (see 
Juliet).  The  first  mention  of  the 
romance  was  made  by  Masuccio  of 
Palermo,  who  in  1476  wrote  a  novel 
about  two  lovers  called  Mariotto  and 
Gianozza,  of  Siena,  in  Italy,  whose 
story  is  like  that  of  Romeo  and  Jtdiet. 
The  theme  was  next  handled  by 
Luigi  da  Porto,  who  wrote  a  similar 
story  of  two  lovers  called  Romeo  and 
Giuletta  and  laid  the  scene  in  Verona. 


Romola 


322 


Rosalind 


In  Verona  the  legend  survives  to-day 
and  has  left  tangible  evidence  of 
itself.  Tradition  has  long  associated 
with  Verona  the  two  contending 
families  of  Montague  and  Capulet, 
from  whom  Romeo  and  Juliet  sprang. 
They  are  known  to-day  as  the 
"  Capuleti  "  and  the  "  Montecchi," 
and  Verona  has  many  things  to  show 
the  traveller  which  claim  association 
with  them  and  their  feuds. 

Romeo  Is  Hamlet  in  love.  There  Is  the 
same  rich  exuberance  of  passion  and  senti- 
ment in  the  one  that  there  is  of  thought  and 
sentiment  in  the  other.  Both  are  absent 
and  self -involved;  both  live  out  of  them- 
selves in  a  world  of  imagination.  Hamlet 
is  abstracted  from  everything;  Romeo  is 
abstracted  from  everything  but  his  love, 
and  lost  in  it.  His  "frail  thoughts  dally 
with  faint  surmise,"  and  are  fashioned  out 
of  the  suggestions  of  hope,  "the  flatteries 
of  sleep."  He  is  himself  only  in  his  Juliet; 
she  is  his  only  reality,  his  heart's  true  home 
and  idol.  The  rest  of  the  world  is  to  him  a 
passing  dream. — Hazlitt:  Characters  of 
Shakespeare's  Plays. 

Romola,  heroine  of  George  Eliot's 
novel  of  that  name  (1863),  daughter 
of  a  wealthy  Florentine  merchant, 
to  whom  she  is  entirely  devoted  even 
when  she  loses  her  heart  to  Tito 
Melemma  (q.v.). 

Readers  in  general  cannot  feel  quite  so 
warmly  to  Romola  as  to  the  childish  Maggie: 
she  is  a  little  too  hard  and  statuesque,  and 
drops  her  husband  rather  too  coolly  and 
decisively  as  soon  as  she  finds  out  that  he  is 
capable  of  disregarding  her  sentiments.  Still 
she  is  one  of  the  few  figures  who  occupy  a 
permanent  and  peculiar  niche  in  the  great 
gallery  of  fiction;  and,  if  she  is  a  trifle  chilly 
and  over-dignified,  one  must  admit  that  she 
is  not  the  less  lifelike.  She  is,  moreover, 
the  only  one — ^to  my  feeling — of  George 
Eliot's  women  whose  marriage  has  not 
something  annoying.  She  marries  a  thor- 
ough scoundrel,  it  is  true,  but  the  miscon- 
ception to  which  she  falls  a  victim  is  one 
which  we  feel  to  be  thoroughly  natural  under 
the  circumstances. — Sir  Leslie  Stephen: 
George  Eliot. 

Rondelet,  Paul,  in  The  Monks  of 
Thelema,  by  Besantand  Pice,  is  drawn 
from  Walter  Pater.    (See  Thelema.) 

Roper,  Margaret,  daughter  of  Sir 
Thomas  More  (q.v.),  who  married 
William  Roper,  is  the  heroine  and 
the  feigned  author  of  The  Household 
of  Sir  Thomas  More,  by  Anne  Man- 
ning. Tennyson  alludes  to  her  in  A 
Dream  of  Fair  Women. 


Morn  broadened  on  the  borders  of  the  dark. 
Ere  I  saw  her  who  clasped  in  her  last 
trance 
Her  murdered  father's  head,  or  Joan  of  Arc, 
A  light  of  ancient  France. 

Tennyson:    A  Dream  of  Fair  Women. 

Rosa,  Aunty,  in  Rudyard  Kipling's 
short  story,  Baa,  Baa,  Black  Sheep, 
the  narrow-minded,  pharisaical,  and 
sour- tempered  relative,  who  comes 
near  crushing  all  kindly  feeUngs  out 
of  little  Punch  (q.v.).  The  character 
is  very  similar  to  that  of  the  aunt 
who  brings  up  Dick  and  Maisie  in 
The  Light  that  Failed. 

Rosalind,  heroine  of  Shakespeare's 
As  You  Like  It,  daughter  of  the 
banished  duke,  loving  and  beloved 
by  Orlando.  She  assumes  male  attire 
and  the  name  of  Ganymede,  and, 
with  her  cousin  Celia,  sets  out  to  find 
her  father  in  the  forest  of  Arden. 
Here  she  re-encounters  Orlando,  who 
does  not  recognize  her,  and  she  sets 
him  the  task  of  making  love  to  Gany- 
mede as  though  **  he  "  were  the  Rosa- 
lind whom  Orlando  is  perpetually 
sighing  for. 

To  every  actress  of  distinction  the 
character  of  Rosalind  has  offered 
irresistible  attractions.  It  has  been 
played  by  Peg  Woffington  and  Mrs. 
Siddons,  by  Charlotte  Cushman  and 
Helen  Faucit,  by  Adelaide  Neilson 
and  Mary  Anderson,  by  Madame 
Modjeska  and  Ellen  Terry.  The 
interpreters  alike  of  comedy  and 
tragedy  have  included  it  in  their 
repertory,  viewing  the  part  as  a  sort 
of  neutral  ground,  independent  of 
professional  classification.  In  truth, 
Rosalind  is  not  to  be  described  as 
tragic  at  all;  yet  the  romance,  the 
sentiment,  the  tenderness  of  the  char- 
acter commend  it  to  the  actresses  of 
tragedy,  while  ics  sportiveness,  its 
wit,  its  archness,  always  subject  it 
to  the  claim  of  those  comedy  actresses 
who  are  not  content  merely  to  pro- 
voke laughter. 

Rosalind  ...  has  vivacity  and  wit 
enough  to  captivate  those  who  like  a  woman 
of  spirit;  and  yet  with  this  there  is  inter- 
woven so  much  womanly  tenderness  and 
delicacy,  she  is,  in  her  gayest  moods,  so 
truly,  sometimes  so  touchingly,  feminine, 
that  she  wins  more  admirers  than  she 
dazzles.— R.  G.  White. 


Rosalinde 


323 


Rosencrantz 


Rosalind  is  not  a  complete  human  being: 
she  is  simply  an  extension  into  five  acts  of 
the  most  affectionate,  fortunate,  delightful 
five  minutes  in  the  life  of  a  charming  woman. 
And  all  the  other  figures  in  the  play  are 
cognate  impostures. — George  Bernard 
Shaw. 

Rosalinde,  the  name  under  which 
Edmund  Spenser  celebrates  his  first 
love.  Immediately  on  leaving  college, 
he  retired  to  the  north  of  England, 
where  he  first  became  enamoured  of 
the  fair  being  to  whom,  according  to 
the  fashion  of  the  day,  he  gave  the 
fanciful  appellation  of  Rosalind.  She 
has  been  satisfactorily  identified  with 
Rose  Daniel,  sister  of  the  poet 
Samuel  Daniel.  See  A  tlantic  Monthly ^ 
vol.  ii,  677. 

Rosaline,  in  Romeo  and  Juliet,  a 
lady  for  whom  Romeo  is  represented 
as  having  cherished  a  hopeless  pas- 
sion before  he  saw  Juliet. 

No  one,  I  believe,  ever  experiences  any 
shock  at  Romeo's  forgetting  his  Rosaline, 
who  has  been  a  mere  name  for  the  yearning 
of  his  youthful  imagination  and  rushing  into 
his  passion  for  Juliet.  Rosaline  was  a  mere 
creation  of  his  fancy, — Coleridge. 

Rosalynde,  heroine  of  Thomas 
Lodge's  prose  fiction  Rosalynde  Eu- 
phues  Golden  Legacie  (1590),  which 
in  its  turn  was  partly  based  upon 
The  Cook's  Tale  of  Gamelyn,  wrongly 
ascribed  to  Chaucer.  Rosalynde  is 
the  obvious  original  of  Shakespeare's 
Rosalind  in  As  You  Like  It,  but  he 
has  turned  a  faint  sketch  into  a  bril- 
liant picture.  The  Forest  of  Arden 
appears  both  in  play  and  novel. 
When  Lodge's  Rosalynde  and  Alinda 
are  banished  by  Torismond  and 
decide  to  find  their  way  thither, 
Rosalynde  assumes  male  attire,  be- 
cause, as  she  explains  to  her  cousin, 
"  I  am  of  tall  stature  and  would  very 
well  become  the  person  and  apparel 
of  a  page;  thou  shalt  be  my  mistress, 
and  I  will  play  the  man  so  properly, 
that,  trust  me,  in  what  company 
soever  I  come,  I  will  not  be  discovered. 
I  will  buy  me  a  suit  and  have  my 
rapier  very  handsomely  by  my  side, 
and,  if  any  knave  offer  wrong,  your 
page  will  show  him  the  point  of  his 
own  weapon." 


Rose  Mary,  heroine  of  a  ballad  by 
D.  G.  Rossetti,  in  volume.  Ballads 
and  other  Poems  (1882).  Rose  Mary 
has  in  her  possession  a  beryl  stone 
which  reveals  anything  to  a  pure 
maiden.  But  she  has  fallen  into  sin 
with  Sir  James  Heronhaye,  and, 
when  she  would  direct  her  lover  how 
to  avoid  an  ambush  prepared  for  him 
by  his  mortal  foe  the  Warden  of 
Holycleugh,  she  reads  the  stone  amiss: 
the  knight  takes  the  wrong  road,  and 
is  slain.  His  body  is  borne,  back  to 
the  lady's  castle,  but  under  his  mail 
are  found  love  tokens  showing  that 
he  had  plighted  his  troth  to  the 
warden's  sister.  Rose  Mary  cleaves 
the  stone  in  twain,  and  so  expels  the 
evil  spirits  who  had  deceived  her  and 
restores  the  good  angel  who  had  been 
driven  out  by  her  sin.  As  she  dies, 
the  angel  receives  her  and  assures 
her  of  heavenly  forgiveness. 

Rosenberg,  Hildegarde,  heroine  of 
the  Initials  (1850),  an  international 
novel  by  Baroness  Tautphoeus.  A 
young  Englishman,  Hamilton,  who 
comes  to  board  with  the  Rosenberg 
family  in  Munich,  falls  in  love  with 
her,  while  Hildegarde's  sister  Cres- 
cenz  complicates  matters  by  falling 
in  love  with  him. 

The  well-born  Englishman  could  not 
help  feeling  and  showing  himself  superior  to 
the  bourgeois  family  which  had  received 
him,  and  such  a  girl  as  Hildegarde  could  not 
help  promptly  hating  him  for  it.  They  met 
almost  as  enemies,  and  their  wooing  through- 
out had  often  the  alarming  effect  of  warring; 
at  the  very  end,  her  capture  is  something 
like  a  hostile  triumph.  The  affair  is  not  the 
less  intoxicating  to  the  spectator;  the  coun- 
try fought  over,  though  diffiult,  is  pictur- 
esque, and  the  manners  and  customs  of  the 
neutrals,  as  well  as  the  belligerents,  are 
realized  as  vital  elements  of  the  exciting 
spectacle. — W.  D.  Howells:  Heroines  of 
Fiction,  vol.  ii,  p.  140. 

Rosencrantz,  in  Shakespeare's 
Hamlet,  a  courtier  who,  with  Guilden- 
stem,  had  been  a  school-fellow  of 
Hamlet's  at  Wittenberg.  They 
always  appear  together,  and  Hamlet 
realizing  that  they  had  been  sent  for 
by  the  king  to  spy  upon  him,  grows 
to  hate  them.  He  calls  them  "  adders 
fanged,"  and  puts  them  to  the  blush 
when  they  own  that  they  cannot  play 


Ross 


324 


Rudiger 


upon  his  pipe.  They  carry  the  orders 
concerning  Hamlet  to  England  and 
are  themselves  sacrificed. 

Ross,  Man  of,  the  name  by  which 
John  Kyrle  (1664-1754),  a  citizen  of 
the  town  of  Ross,  in  Herfordshire, 
has  been  celebrated  by  Pope  and 
Coleridge.  It  was  originally  given 
him  during  his  lifetime,  by  a  country 
friend,  and  the  title  is  said  to  have 
pleased  him  greatly.  Kyrle  was  a 
gentleman  of  remarkable  benevolence 
and  public  spirit,  who  with  an  income 
of  only  £500  a  year  actually  per- 
formed all  the  worthy  deeds  chron- 
icled in  Pope's  tribute.  This  appears 
in  Moral  Essays,  Epistle  iii,  and  con- 
sists of  but  16  lines,  the  concluding 
ones  running  as  follows: 

Whose  causeway  parts  the  vale  with  shady 

rows? 
Whose  seats  the  weary  traveller  repose? 
Who  taught  that  heaven-directed  spire  to 

rise? 
"The    Man    of    Ross,"    each    lisping    babe 

replies. 

Roumestan,  Numa,  hero  of  a  novel 
of  that  name  by  Alphonse  Daudet 
(188 1 ),  a  typical  Provengal  bon- 
homme  of  unusual  intelligence  and 
boundless  ambition,  a  liar  and  a  brag- 
gart, who  gets  himself  elected  as  a 
deputy  and  rises  to  eminence  in  the 
French  capital  and  international 
politics. 

Roxana,  heroine  of  a  novel  by 
Daniel  Defoe,  The  Fortunate  Mistress 
Lady  Roxana  (1724).  A  courtesan 
who  preys  upon  the  upper  classes, 
she  was  originally  the  innocent  and 
beautiful  daughter  of  a  French  refu- 
gee. An  unfortunate  marriage  with 
a  fool,  who  levants,  sends  her  to  the 
bad.  She  accumulates  much  wealth 
in  sordid  and  squaUd  ways,  but  is 
overreached  in  the  end  and  dies  in 
jail. 

Roy,  Rob, — i.e.,  Robert  the  Red, — 
a  real  character,  the  Robin  Hood  of 
Scotland,  who  plays  an  important 
part  in  Scott's  novel  named  after  him. 

Judged  by  Scott's  novel,  the  biggest, 
bravest  heart  that  ever  beat  beneath  the 
MacGregor  tartan  was  that  of  Rob  Roy,  so 
named  from  the  color  of  his  hair  and  his 
fresh,  ruddy  complexion.  Scott  did  not 
create  the  Rob  Roy  of  romance.    He  ideal- 


izes, no  doubt,  but  his  interpretation  of  the 
character  of  Rob  rests  mainly  on  the  popu- 
lar tradition  of  the  man,  A  descendant  of 
the  blood-thirsty  Dugald  Ciahr  Mohr,  Rob 
had  all  his  ancestor's  love  of  the  sword  and 
capacity  for  leadership,  without  his  cruelty. 
His  lot  was  cast  in  the  most  restless  epoch 
of  Scottish  history.  It  was  an  age  of  semi- 
barbarism,  when  the  passion  for  power  was 
the  main  thing,  when  a  pillaging  of  the 
industrious  Saxon  was  considered  the  proof 
of  manliness  and  bravery. — S.  R.  Crockett: 
The  Scott  Originals,  p.  19S. 

Rubempre,  Lucien  de,  journalist, 
author,  and  dandy,  who  appears  in 
several  of  Balzac's  novels,  notably 
Lost  Illusions  (1843),  A  Distinguished 
Provengal  at  Paris  ( 1 843 )  ,and  Splendors 
and  Miseries  of  Courtesans. 

After  scandalizing  the  people  of 
Angouleme  by  what  is  actually  a 
platonic  passion  for  a  great  lady,  he 
repairs  to  Paris  in  her  train,  dreaming 
great  dreams  of  the  figure  he  will  cut 
there  as  a  poet.  ^  Taken  up  by  the 
Cenacle,  a  coterie  of  literary  men, 
they  soon  drop  him.  He  enters  jour- 
nalism, finds  it  abominably  corrupt, 
and,  after  a  meteoric  career,  returns 
to  his  native  city,  ruined  in  health, 
morals,  and  money. 

Rudge,  Bamaby,  in  Dickens's 
novel  of  that  name  (1841),  the  half- 
witted son  of  a  murderer,  who  levies 
blackmail  on  Barnaby's  mother, 
Mary  Bamaby.  At  the  age  of  twenty- 
three  years  Bamaby  is  a  red-haired, 
glassy-eyed,  grotesque  object,  clad 
in  a  green  dress  with  tawdry  ruffles, 
a  fantastically  trimmed  hat  upon  his 
head,  and  carrying  in  a  basket  at  his 
back  a  raven  known  as  Grip.  During 
the  Gordon  riots  he  eagerly  joins  the 
mob  in  their  work  of  destruction,  his 
strength  and  agility  making  him  a 
valuable  auxiliary.  Arrested  and 
condemned  to  death,  he  is  eventually 
pardoned  and  retires  with  his  mother 
to  peaceful  obscurity. 

Rudiger,  Clotilde  von,  in  George 
Meredith's  The  Tragic  Comedians, 
the  young  girl  for  whose  sake  the 
middle-aged  Dr.  Alvan  is  killed  in  a 
duel  by  Prince  Marko.  The  novel 
is  founded  solidly  on  fact.  Alvan  is 
Ferdinand  Lassalle,  Marko  is  Yanco 
von  Racowitza,  and  Clotilde  is 
Helene   von    Donniges,  who  subse- 


Rudin 


325 


Sacharissa 


quently  to  the  duel  married  Yanco, 
and,  as  Frau  von  Racowitza,  pub- 
lished in  1879  Meine  Beziehungen  zu 
Ferdinand  Lassalle,  a  rather  lame 
apologia  for  the  part  played  by  her 
ill  the  tragedy  of  fifteen  years  pre- 
vious. Every  important  incident  in 
Meredith's  novel  is  taken  from 
Helene's  book.  Later  she  became 
Countess  Schewitsch. 

Rudin,  Dimitri,  hero  and  title  of  a 
novel  (i860)  by  Ivan  Tourgenief. 
He  is  a  vainglorious  charlatan,  who 
honestly  believes  in  himself  as  a  great 
literary  genius,  and  forces  a  tem- 
porary acquiescence  upon  others, 
especially  female  others.  He  imposes 
first  upon  Daria  Mikhailovna,  who 
is  ambitious  to  figure  as  the  head  of 
a  salon,  but  she  is  soon  disillusionized. 
His  next  victim  is  an  old  lady,  also 
a  bluestocking,  who  dismisses  him 
when  she  finds  him  making  successful 
love  to  her  daughter.  Forced  to 
leave  Russia,  he  ends  his  life  defend- 
ing a  barricade  in  Paris. 

Rugg,  Peter,  hero  of  a  fantastic 
little  story,  Peter  Rugg,  the  Missing 
Man  (1824),  by  William  Austin, 
which  achieved  a  wide  but  ephemeral 
reputation_  in  the  United  States. 
Peter,  a  citizen  of  pre-revolutionary 
Boston,  was  caught  in  a  storm  while 
out  driving,  and,  refusing  all  invita- 
tions to  tarry  with  a  friend,  swore  a 
fearful  oath:  "  I  will  see  home  to- 
night in  spite  of  the  tempest,  or  may 
I  never  see  home!  "  Hence  he  was 
compelled    to    wander    perpetually 


between  Hartford  and  Boston  in  a 
spectral  chaise  drawn  by  a  spectral 
horse,  with  a  spectral  child  beside 
him,  and  a  thunder-storm  in  the 
rear.  The  tale  is  included  in  Drake's 
Legends  of  New  England. 

Peter  Rugg  is  a  creation  after  Hawthorne's 
own  heart;  the  earth  hath  bubbles  as  the 
water  hath,  and  he  is  of  them;  and  the  place 
given  him  in  The  Virtuoso's  Collection  gives 
proof  that  he  had  met  Hawthorne's  eye. — 
T.  W.  HiGGiNSON,  in  New  York  Independent. 
May,  1888. 

Rutherford,  Mark,  hero  of  two 
novels  by  William  Hale  White 
("  Reuben  Shapcott  "),  The  Auto- 
biography of  Mark  Rutherford  (188 1), 
and  its  sequel,  Mark  Rutherford's 
Deliverance  (1885).  A  doubter  who 
wishes  to  beUeve,  but  is  too  scrupu- 
lously honest  to  accept  any  compro- 
mises, Mark  leaves  the  independent 
ministry  for  a  Unitariam  chapel,  and 
then  drifts  into  agnosticism,  gives  up 
the  problem  of  teaching  his  fellow- 
man  for  that  of  helping  him  in  his 
poverty  and  depression,  and  finally 
returns  to  a  greatly  modified  form  of 
Calvinism,  and,  in  his  softened  state, 
marries  the  true  and  loyal  woman 
whom  he  had  formerly  despised  for 
her  intellectual  limitations. 

Ryecroft,  Henry,  hero  of  The  Pri- 
vate Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft  (1903), 
a  work  wherein  George  Gissing  puts 
into  the  form  of  autobiographic  fiction 
the  aspirations,  struggles,  and  dis- 
illusionments  of  his  own  career  as  an 
author. 


Sacharissa  (Gr.  sakehar,  "  sugar  "), 
the  name  under  which  Edmund 
Waller  wooed,  but  failed  to  win, 
Dorothea  Sidney,  eldest  daughter  of 
the  Earl  of  Sunderland.  The  poems 
on  Sacharissa  and  her  beautiful  home 
at  Penhurst,  where  Waller  sang  his 
passion  to  the  deer  among  the  beeches 
or  watched  Vandyke  painting  her  in 
the  '*  Shop  of  Beauty"  have  immortal- 
ized lady  and  poet  alike.  He  sings 
to  Sacharissa's  picture,  to  her  painter, 
her  friends,  her  servant,  her  coming 


and  going,  her  sleeping  or  not  sleep- 
ing, but  in  vain.  The  Lady  Dorothy 
chose  a  wooer  of  higher  degree,  Lord 
Spencer,  afterwards  created  Earl  of 
Sunderland,  who  was  killed  at  the 
battle  of  Newbury.  In  later  days  we 
hear  of  another  meeting  between  Mr. 
Waller  and  Sacharissa.  "When,  Mr. 
Waller,"  said  the  Dowager  Countess 
of  Sunderland,  "  will  you  write  such 
beautiful  verses  to  me  again?  " 
"  When,  madam,"  repUed  the  poet, 
"  your  ladyship  is  as  handsome  and 


St.  Clair 


326 


Salathiel  ben  Sadi 


young  again."  This  must  surely  be 
calumny, — so  accomplished  a  courtier 
would  have  turned  his  answer  more 
skilfully.  His  Love's  Farewell  is  a 
more  fitting  close  to  the  romance. 

St.  Clair,  Eva,  in  Mrs.  H.  B. 
Stowe's  novel,  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin 
(1851),  the  daughter  of  Uncle  Tom's 
master. 

St.  Leon,  hero  of  a  novel  by  William 
Godwin,  St.  Leon,  a  Tale  of  the  Six- 
teenth Century  (1799),  a  gentleman  in 
respectable  circumstances,  living  com- 
fortably with  his  wife  and  children, 
who  is  morally  and  mentally  ruined 
by  coming  into  possession  of  the  elixir 
of  life  and  the  philosopher's  stone. 

Saint  Preux,  hero  of  Rousseau's 
novel,  Julie,  ou  la  Nouvelle  Heloise^ 
evidently  meant  as  a  portrait  of  the 
author.  Separated  from  his  Julie 
after  being  her  tutor  and  her  impas- 
sioned but  determinedly  platonic 
lover,  Saint  Preux  goes  for  a  voyage 
round  the  world  and  returns.  Julie  is 
now  Madame  de  Wolmar.  M.  de 
Wolmar,  knowing  all  about  the  past, 
welcomes  Saint  Preux  as  an  old  friend, 
whose  whilom  affection  was  a  proof 
of  sensibility  and  discernment.  He 
invites  him  to  sit  at  his  table,  to  stay 
in  his  house,  and  to  teach  his  children. 
As  a  supreme  proof  of  confidence  he 
makes  a  point  of  leaving  him  alone 
with  his  wife.  These  incidents  weave 
together  the  tangled  facts  of  real  life. 
The  original  of  Julie  {q.v.)  was  married 
to  Count  d'Houdetot,  a  complaisant 
husband,  who  made  up  a  menage  d 
trois  with  Saint  Lambert,  his  wife's 
(most  unplatonic)  lover.  Rousseau 
came  near  resolving  the  trinity  into 
a  quartette,  but  his  own  hesitancy 
and  the  lady's  self-conquest  at  the 
psychological  moment  saved  the 
situation.  See  Gribble:  Rousseau 
and  the  Women  he  Loved. 

Saladin  (1137-1193),  a  famous 
sultan  of  Egypt  and  Syria,  founder  of 
the  Ayubite  dynasty  therein,  appears 
in  Scott's  romance  of  the  Crusades, 
The  Talisman,  as  the  chief  adversary 
of  Richard  Cceur  de  Lion.  Each 
loved  and  admired  the  other,  "  as 
noble  adversaries  ever  love  each 
other. ' '   Fond  of  incognito  adventure, 


like  Haroun  al  Rashid,  Saladin  ap- 
peared in  disguise  as  Sheerkohf  of 
Kurdistan,  fought  with  Kenneth  of 
Scotland;  subsequently  guided  him 
to  the  hermit  of  Engaddi,  and,  re- 
turning with  him  to  the  Christian 
camp  as  Adonbec  the  physician, 
cured  Richard  and  others  by  the  aid 
of  his  sacred  talisman.  He  suggested 
to  Kenneth  the  stratagem  by  which 
he  regained  his  honor,  and  in  his 
proper  person  presided  over  the  trial 
by  combat  in  which  Kenneth  over- 
came the  traitor  Conrade  of  Mont- 
serrat. 

Of  all  Sir  Walter's  characters  the  most 
dashing  and  spirited  is  the  Sultan  Saladin. 
But  he  is  not  meant  for  a  hero,  nor  fated  to 
be  a  lover.  He  is  a  collateral  and  incidental 
performer  in  the  scene.  His  movements 
therefore  remain  free,  and  he  is  master  of 
his  own  resplendent  energies,  which  produce 
so  much  the  more  daring  and  felicitous  an 
eflEect. — Hazlitt:  Essays,  Why  Heroes  of 
Romance  are  Insipid. 

Salammbo,  B.  C,  daughter  of  Ham- 
ilcar  Barca,  general  of  the  Carthagin- 
ians during  the  First  Punic  War,  is 
the  titular  heroine  of  an  historical 
romance  by  Gustav  Flaubert.  She 
is  beloved  by  Matho,  leader  of  the 
mercenaries  who  have  revolted 
against  Carthage  and  stolen  the 
sacred  Zaimph  or  mantle  of  the  god- 
dess Tanit.  Salammbo  is  urged  to 
recapture  the  talisman,  penetrates  to 
the  tent  of  Matho  at  night,  and  suc- 
ceeds by  her  blandishments  in  carry- 
ing it  off.  Carthage  triumphs  over  her 
rebellious  soldiery  and  cuts  them  to 
pieces.  Matho,  reserved  for  the  sport 
of  the  capital,  runs  the  gauntlet  of 
hideous  torture  through  the  streets 
and  expires  at  the  feet  of  Salammbo. 
She  herself  dies  while  pledging  the 
genius  of  Carthage,  "for  that  she  had 
touched  the  mantle  of  Tanit." 

Salathiel  ben  Sadi,  a  mysterious 
Jew,  who  appeared  and  disappeared 
in  Venice  towards  the  close  of  the 
sixteenth  century  in  such  sudden 
fashion  that  men  came  to  identify 
him  with  the  Wandering  Jew  (see 
vol.  11)  and  consider  him  as  one  of 
many  avatars  of  the  cobbler  or  porter 
who  insulted  Christ.  Finally  his 
name   entirely    supplanted    that   of 


Sally  in  our  Alley 


327 


Sangrado 


Ahasuerus  or  Cartophilos  given  in 
the  earlier  legends.  The  Rev.  George 
Croly  (1829)  published  a  romance 
entitled  Salathiel,  which  was  revived 
in  1900  and  renamed  Tarry  Thou  Till 
I  Come, 

Sally  in  our  Alley,  song  by  Henry 
Carey  (1734),  which  has  attained  a 
wide  popularity.  Of  its  composition 
the  author  gives  this  account: 

A  shoemaker's  apprentice,  making  a  holi- 
day with  his  sweetheart,  treated  her  with  a 
sight  of  Bedlam,  the  puppet  shows,  the  fly- 
ing chairs,  and  all  the  elegancies  of  Moor- 
field,  from  whence,  proceeding  to  the  farthing 
pie-house,  he  gave  her  a  collation  of  buns, 
cheese,  cakes,  gammon  of  bacon,  stuffed 
beef,  and  bottled  ale;  through  all  which 
scenes  the  author  dodged  them  (charmed 
with  the  simplicity  of  their  courtship)  from 
whence  he  drew  this  little  sketch  of  nature; 
but.  being  then  young  and  obscure,  he  was 
very  much  ridiculed  by  some  of  his  acquaint- 
ance for  this  performance,  which  neverthe- 
less made  its  way  into  the  polite  world,  and 
amply  recompensed  him  by  the  applause  of 
the  divine  Addison,  who  was  pleased  (more 
than  once)  to  mention  it  with  approbation. 

The  original  air  to  the  song  was 
also  composed  by  Carey,  but  it  was 
subsequently  dropped  and  the  words 
were  adapted  to  an  old  ballad  air, 
The  Country  Lass. 

Sampson,  Dominie  Abel,  in  Scott's 
novel  Guy  Mannering,  a  Scotch  tutor 
in  the  Mannering  family, — "  a  poor, 
modest,  humble  scholar,  who  had 
won  his  way  through  the  classics,  but 
fallen  to  the  leeward  in  the  voyage 
of  life."  His  favorite  ejaculation, 
"  Pro-di-gi-ous ! "  is  constantly  ex- 
torted from  him  by  any  emotion  of 
surprise,  wonder,  or  admiration. 

Sampson,  Dr.,  in  Charles  Reade's 
Hard  Cash  (1863),  a  sturdy  Scotch 
physician,  one  of  the  author's  strong- 
est and  most  original  characters,  who 
despises  all  regtilar  practitioners  and 
at  the  crisis  of  the  story  comes  to  the 
rescue  of  Alfred  Hardie,  confined  in 
an  asylum. 

Samson,  hero  of  Milton's  dramatic 
poem  Samson  Agonistes  (1671),  is  the 
Samson  of  Judges  xvi,  blinded  and 
bound  and  a  sport  for  his  Philistine 
enemies  in  Dagon's  temple,  but 
wreaking  a  terrible  revenge  by  pulling 
down  the  pillars  of  the  edifice  and 
perishing  with  the  spectators  in  the 


ruins.  Milton  must  have  taken  the 
biblical  story  as  an  allegory  of  his 
own  later  life.  He  too  was  after  the 
Restoration  a  champion  at  bay,  a 
prophet  without  honor  in  his  own 
country,  which  had  been  delivered 
into  the  hands  of  the  enemy,  poor, 
blind,  derided,  but  still  miHtant 
(agonistes)  and  ready  for  vengeance 
in  the  name  of  the  Lord. 

He  also  was  blind,  as  Samson  had  been, — 
groping  about  among  the  malignant  condi- 
tions that  had  befallen  him,  helplessly  de- 
pendent on  the  finding  of  others,  and  bereft 
of  the  external  consolations  and  means  of 
resistance  to  his  scorn  ers  that  might  have 
come  to  him  through  sight.  He  also  had  to 
live  mainly  in  the  imagery  of  the  past.  In 
that  past,  too,  there  were  similarities  in  his 
case  to  that  of  Samson.  Like  Samson,  sub- 
stantially, he  had  been  a  Nazarite, — no 
drinker  of  wine  or  strong  drink,  but  one  who 
had  always  been  an  ascetic  in  his  dedicated 
service  to  great  designs.  And  the  chief 
blunder  in  his  life,  that  which  had  gone  near- 
est to  wreck  it,  and  had  left  the  most  mar- 
ring consequences  and  the  most  painful 
reflections,  was  the  very  blunder  of  which, 
twice-repeated,  Samson  had  to  accuse  him- 
self. Like  Samson,  he  had  married  a  Philis- 
tine woman,  one  not  of  his  own  tribe,  and 
having  no  thoughts  or  interests  in  common 
with  his  own;  and  like  Samson,  he  had  suf- 
fered indignities  from  this  wife  and  her  rela- 
tions, till  he  had  learned  to  rue  the  match. — 
Prof.  Masson. 

Sandford,  Harry,  in  Thomas  Day's 
juvenile  story  Sandford  and  Merton 
(1780),  the  son  of  a  poor  farmer,  full 
of  all  boyish  virtues.  He  is  placed, 
with  Thomas  Merton,  the  six-year-old 
son  of  a  wealthy  gentleman,  under 
the  tuition  of  the  wise  and  learned 
Mr.  Barlow,  an  ex-clergyman,  who 
continually  holds  him  up  as  a  model 
and  exemplar  for  the  more  or  less 
reprehensible  Tommy. 

Sangrado,  Doctor,  in  Le  Sage's 
novel,  Gil  Bias,  a  famous  physician 
in  Valladolid,  to  whom  Gil  Bias 
attaches  himself  as  pupil  and  servant. 
He  is  imitated  from  the  Dr.  Sagredo 
of  Espinel's  romance,  Marcos  de 
Ohregon.  A  tall,  thin,  pale  man  of 
very  solemn  appearance,  who  weighed 
his  discourse  and  used  "  great  pomp 
of  words,"  his  system  was  simple 
enough.  It  consisted  of  profuse 
blood-letting,  and  equally  profuse 
administration  of  hot  water  into  the 
system.    Gil  Bias  was  reduced  to  a 


Sans-Gene 


328 


Savoyard  Vicar 


sparse  diet  of  beans,  peas,  and  stewed 
apples,  but  allowed  to  drink  all  the 
water  he  could. 

Sans-Gene,  Madame,  the  nick- 
name of  Marie  Therese  Figueur 
(i 774-1861),  who,  bom  in  Burgundy, 
was  enrolled  at  the  age  of  19  in  a 
cavalry  regiment  commanded  by  one 
of  her  uncles,  went  to  Germany  with 
the  French  and  Batavian  armies, 
charged  at  Hohenlinden,  took  part 
in  the  siege  of  Toulon,  was  in  the 
Italian,  Spanish,  and  Austrian  cam- 
paigns, and  fought  at  Austerlitz  and 
in  Russia.  During  the  Hundred 
Days  the  Emperor  conferred  the 
Legion  of  Honor  upon  her,  and  she 
charged  at  Waterloo  for  the  last  time. 

With  the  Restoration  she  left  the 
army  to  marry  Marshal  Lefebvre, 
Duke  of  Dantzic  (1755-1820).  She 
was  then  39.  Victorien  Sardou,  in 
his  drama  Madame  Sans-Gene,  has 
taken  this  martial  character  and 
made  her  a  vulgarian  whose  comic 
familiarity  is  tolerated  by  Napoleon. 

Saracinesca,  Prince,  a  character 
in  a  novel  by  Marion  Crawford, 
Saracinesca  (1887),  which  forms  the 
first  in  a  series  dealing  with  the  social 
and  domestic  life  of  nineteenth  cen- 
tury Roman  aristocracy.  The  love 
affairs  of  his  son  Sant  Ilario  and  of 
the  high-souled  Corona  d' Astrardente, 
who,  though  haplessly  married  to  a 
superannuated  dandy,  remains  true 
to  her  husband,  occupy  the  first  vol- 
ume; the  solution  of  that  entangle- 
ment is  given  in  the  second,  Sant 
Ilario  (1889).  In  Don  Orsino  (1892) 
the  titular  hero  is  Sant  Ilario's  son, 
who  occupies  himself  with  building 
speculations.  The  concluding  volume, 
Corleone  (1898),  is  a  Sicilian  episode 
in  the  history  of  the  Saracinescas, 
bringing  them  in  contact  with  the 
Corleones, — "  the  worst  blood  in 
Italy." 

Sardanapalus,  hero  of  Lord  Byron's 
tragedy  (182 1),  based  on  the  Greek 
fable  of  the  last  Assyrian  king  who 
fell  B.C.  823.  He  is  here  repre- 
sented as  generous  and  amiable, 
but  so  fond  of  pleasure,  so  vain  and 
indolent,  that  his  enemies  despise 
him  for  his  apparent  weakness  and 


effeminacy.  Arbaces,  a  Mede,  and 
Beleses,  a  Chaldean  soothsayer,  con- 
spire against  him.  With  their  ad- 
herents they  attack  the  palace,  and 
force  their  way  into  the  grand  hall. 
Sardanapalus,  roused  at  last,  fights 
with  great  bravery,  astonishing  his 
friends  and  appalling  his  enemies. 
But  the  rebels  are  finally  victorious. 
Sardanapalus,  at  the  instigation  of 
his  favorite  slave  Myrrha,  has  a 
funeral  pile  raised  and  immolates 
himself  upon  it.  Myrrha  applies  the 
torch  and  then  throws  herself  into 
the  flames  to  be  consumed  with  the 
king,  her  master.  The  only  deviation 
from  history  in  the  above  is  in  the 
introduction  of  the  slave  Myrrha. 
The  soothsayer's  name,  however, 
should  have  been  spelled  Belesis,  not 
Beleses,  and  the  second  syllable 
should  be  short. 

Savage,  Captain,  a  naval  comman- 
der in  Frederick  Marryat's  novel, 
Feter  Simple  (1833),  daring,  brilliant 
and  successful,  but  a  severe  martinet. 
The  character  is  drawn  from  Thomas 
Cochrane,  tenth  Earl  of  Dundonald, 
with  whom  the  author  shipped  as 
midshipman  at  the  beginning  of  his 
naval  career.  In  one  or  other  of  his 
traits  the  same  original  may  be  traced 
in  other  portraits  from  the  same 
hand, — the  Captain  C.  of  Frank 
Mildmay  (1829),  Captain  M.  of  The 
King's  Own,  and  Captain  Maclean 
of  Joseph  Faithful  (1834). 

Savonarola,  a  famous  Florentine 
preacher,  religious  enthusiast,  and 
would-be  reformer,  figures  as  an  im- 
portant character  in  George  Eliot's 
novel  Romola  (1863),  and  also  to  a 
lesser  extent  in  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe's  Agnes  of  Sorrento  (1862). 
George  EUot's  portrait  is  a  powerful 
study  of  ardent  ideals  ending  in 
failure.  Savonarola's  personal  aims 
and  longings  for  the  glory  that  he 
thought  his  due  are  made  to  become 
his  ruin  and  to  furnish  the  road  to 
his  defeat  and  death. 

Savoyard  Vicar,  in  Rousseau's  novel 
Emile,  a  mild  and  gentle  priest  who 
believes  more  in  good  works  than  in 
any  sectarian  creed,  and  whose 
"  Confessions  "   form   an   important 


Sawin 


329 


Scapin 


episode  in  the  book.  The  character 
combines  the  traits  of  two  of  Rous- 
seau's early  instructors,  M.  Gatier, 
his  gentle,  melancholy  studious  tutor 
in  the  Seminary  of  Annecy,  in  Savoy; 
and  the  Ahh6  Gaime,  whom,  in  his 
boyhood,  he  had  met  in  Turin,  an 
ecclesiastic  more  remarkable  for  the 
breadth  and  liberaUty  than  for  the 
orthodoxy  of  his  religious  opinions. 
Rousseau's  Vicar  is  a  deist  at  heart 
who  cannot  bring  himself  either  to 
accept  absolutely  or  to  reject  the 
Gospel,  but  who  deems  that  until  we 
know  more  fully  what  the  truth  is  it 
is  best  to  respect  the  public  order, 
and  to  refrain  from  disturbing  the 
established  worship,  and  who  remains 
a  priest  in  full  communion  with  the 
Church  for  much  the  same  reasons 
that  actuate  Browning's  Bishop  Blou- 
gram.  The  portraiture  did  not  prove 
agreeable  to  either  the  advocates  or 
the  antagonists  of  revealed  rehgion; 
the  first  saw  in  it  a  dangerous  attack 
upon  orthodoxy,  and  the  latter  felt 
it  was  a  powerful  blow  against  crude 
atheism  and  materiahsm.  Le  Vicaire 
Savoyard,  Voltaire  wrote  to  a  friend, 
**  deserves  all  possible  chastisement. 
The  Judas  abandons  us  just  as  our 
philosophy  was  about  to  tritmiph." 

Sawin,  Birdofreedom,  a  charac- 
ter introduced  into  Lowell's  Biglow 
Papers.  A  fellow-townsman  of  Hosea 
Biglpw's,  he  enUsts  in  the  Mexican 
armies  a  volunteer,  and  writes  home 
a  melancholy  account  of  the  horrors 
into  which  he  has  ^  been  inveigled. 
His  letters,  three  in  number,  are 
versified  by  Hosea. 

Sawyer,  Bob,  in  Dickens's  Pick- 
wick Papers  (1836),  friend  and  room- 
mate of  Benjamin  Allen  {q.v.),  both 
medical  students  of  dishevelled  ap- 
pearance and  rolHcking  bohemian 
habits,  revelling  in  beer  and  oysters, 
and  devoting  as  little  attention  as 
possible  to  their  profession.  Event- 
ually Sawyer  sets  up  medical  prac- 
tice in  Bristol,  with  small  success. 
Sam  Weller  delights  to  call  him  Mr. 
Sawbones. 

Sawyer,  Tom,  hero  of  Mark 
Twain's  novel  of  that  name  (1876),  a 
story  of  boyish  adventure  in  a  village 


in  Missouri  on  the  Mississippi  River. 
He  reappears  less  prominently  in  its 
sequel  Huckleberry  Finn  (1885).  The 
character  is  imdoubtedly  reminiscent 
of  the  author's  own  youth. 

Both  boys  have  their  full  share  of  boyish 
imagination;  and  Tom  Sawyer,  being  given 
to  books,  lets  his  imagination  run  on  robbers 
and  pirates  and  genies,  with  a  perfect  under- 
standing with  himself  that,  if  you  want  to 
get  fun  out  of  this  life,  you  must  never  hesi- 
tate to  make  believe  very  hard;  and,  with 
Tom's  youth  and  health,  he  never  finds  it 
hard  to  make  believe  and  to  be  a  pirate  at 
will,  or  to  summon  an  attendant  spirit,  or  to 
rescue  a  prisoner  from  the  deepest  dungeon 
'neath  the  castle  moat.  But  in  Huck  this 
imagination  has  turned  to  superstition;  he 
is  a  walking  repository  of  the  juvenile  folk- 
lore of  the  Mississippi  Valley — a  folklore 
partly  traditional  among  the  white  settlers, 
but  largely  influenced  by  intimate  associa- 
tion with  the  negroes. — Saturday  Review, 
January  31,  1885. 

Scapin  (It.  Scapino,  either  from 
scappino,  a  sock,  or  scappare,  to  run 
away),  one  of  the  famous  traditionary 
characters  of  the  Italian  stage  whom 
the  French  have  borrowed,  and  whom 
Mohere  has  immortalized  in  Four- 
beries  de  Scapin.  He  is  the  only  one 
of  MoU^re's  valets  who  is  entirely 
free  from  cowardice;  ever  ready  to 
risk  his  shoulders  in  any  adventure. 
Thus  he  may  be  considered  the 
founder  of  a  race  which  did  not  take 
possession  of  the  theatre  till  many 
years  after  Molidre's  death — the  race 
of  Intrigants,  Aventuriers,  and  Chev- 
ahers  d' Industrie,  who  revel  in  intrigue 
for  its  own  sake,  who  hunger  and 
thirst  for  the  unknown  and  the  for- 
bidden, for  excitement,  change,  ad- 
venture at  all  hazards  and  at  any 
price.  The  Italian  Scapino  is  one 
of  the  many  descendants  of  the 
Davus  and  Tranio  of  classic  comedy, 
and  is  represented  as  a  valet  of  in- 
finite wit  and  knavery,  a  trickster,  a 
babbler,  and  a  coward,  who  ingrati- 
ates himself  with  the  prodigal  son 
of  a  family  by  espousing  his  cause  as 
against  the  miserly  father,  and  by 
assisting  him  in  all  his  intrigues,  but 
is  ruled  throughout  quite  as  much  by 
interest  as  by  inclination.  Scapino 
originated  in  Milan. 

His  traditional  dress,  on  the  Italian 
stage,  included  a  mask,  a  large  plumed 


Schedoni 


330 


Schweidler 


hat,  a  heavy  cloak,  and  a  wooden 
sword.  In  France  he  dropped  his 
mask,  and  was  arrayed  in  garments 
striped  green  and  white. 

Schedoni,  in  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe's 
romance  The  Italian,  a  wicked,  able, 
and  hypocritical  monk,  profligate,  un- 
relenting, and  implacable. 

Schlemihl,  Peter,  hero  and  title  of 
a  tale  (1813),  by  Adalbert  von  Cha- 
misso.  A  poor  tailor,  he  tells  his  own 
story.  In  exchange  for  an  inexhaust- 
ible purse  he  had  parted  with  his 
shadow  to  a  mysterious  little  man  in 
grey.  At  first  he  exults  in  his  new 
opulence.  But  wherever  he  goes 
questions  concerning  his  lost  shadow 
assail  him.  Suspicions  of  all  sorts  are 
awakened.  He  is  shunned  and 
avoided;  his  very  servants  refuse  to 
live  with  him;  his  betrothed  jilts  him; 
and  poor  Schlemihl  finds  refuge  in  a 
desert  where  there  are  none  to  mock 
him.  One  day  the  little  man  re- 
appears and  offers  to  return  the 
shadow  at  the  price  of  Peter's  soul. 
Peter,  in  his  wretchedness,  is  on  the 
point  of  yielding,  but  luckily  asks 
after  a  man  whom  he  suspects  of 
having  entered  into  a  similar  com- 
pact. The  devil  is  forced  to  show  him 
the  corpse  of  this  other  victim.  Peter 
in  horror  flings  the  magic  purse  into 
a  chasm,  and  is  finally  relieved  of  his 
tormentor. 

Many  attempts  have  been  made 
to  read  an  allegorical  meaning  into 
Schlemihl's  story.  Chamisso  himself 
expressly  denied  any  didactic  purpose. 

"I  have  seldom,"  he  says,  "any  ulterior 
aim  in  my  poetry;  if  an  anecdote  or  a  word 
strikes  me  in  a  particular  manner,  I  suppose 
it  must  have  the  same  effect  on  others,  and 
I  set  to  work,  wrestling  laboriously  with 
the  language,  till  the  thing  comes  out  dis- 
tinctly. 'Schlemihl,'  too,  came  forth  in  this 
way.  I  had  lost  on  a  journey  my  hat,  port- 
manteau, gloves,  pocket-handkerchief,  and 
all  my  movable  estate.  Fouqu6  asked  me 
whether  I  had  not  also  lost  my  shadow,  and 
we  pictured  to  ourselves  the  effects  of  such 
a  disaster,"  Nevertheless,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  he  was  influenced  by  a 
world-wide  tradition. 

The  tale  of  Peter  Schlemihl  belongs  to  a 
family  of  legends  which  show  that  a  man's 
shadow  has  been  generally  regarded  as  a  sort 
of  spiritual  attendant  of  the  body,  which 
under  certain  circumstances  it  may  perma- 
nently forsake.     In  strict  accordance  with 


this  idea,  not  only  in  classic  languages,  but 
in  various  barbaric  tongues,  the  word  mean- 
ing ' '  shadow"  expresses  also  the  soul  or  other 
self, — ^JOHN  Fiske:  Myths  attd  Myt'n-makers. 

Scholar  Gipsy,  in  Matthew  Arnold's 
poem  of  that  name  (1853),  the 
hero  of  an  Oxford  tradition,  that 
a  lad  in  the  University  many  years 
ago  wandered  away  with  :;he  gypsies 
in  search  of  their  strange  lore  and 
still  haunts  the  fields  and  watersides. 
The  poet  and  his  poet  friend  Arthur 
H.  Clough,  in  their  wanderings 
around  Oxford,  realize  that  the  life  of 
the  vagrant  scholar  was  finer  than 
their  own. 

Schonberg-Cotta,  Friedrich  and 
Elsd,  the  feigned  authors  of  The 
Chronicles  0}  the  Schonberg-Cotta 
Family  (1865),  by  Mrs.  EUzabeth 
Charles.  Their  father  is  an  improvi- 
dent _  printer  with  eight  children  to 
provide  for;  their  aunt,  Ursula  Cotta, 
adopts  Martin  Luther,  who  is  the 
school-fellow  of  Friedrich  at  the  uni- 
versity of  Erfurt;  and  a  fellow  monk 
in  an  Augustinian  monastery. 
Finally  the  two  friends  go  to  Rome 
together,  and  their  experiences  in 
that  city  lead  to  the  revolt  against  the 
Papacy,  in  which  Friedrich  becomes 
the  faithful  henchman  of  Luther. 

Schweidler,  Mary,  heroine  of  a 
romance  The  Amber  Witch  (Ger.  Die 
Bernstein  Hexe,  1843) ,  by  Johann  Wil- 
helm  Meinhold.  Purporting  to  be  a 
contemporaneous  chronicle  by  Herr 
Schweidler,  pastor  of  Coserow  in  Pom- 
erania,  of  certain  events  that  took 
place  in  his  parish  in  the  early  seven- 
teenth century,  the  hoax  for  a  period 
completely  deceived  the  antiquarian 
world. 

During  the  distress  occasioned  by 
the  Thirty  Years'  War,  Schweidler's 
daughter  Mary  has  discovered  a  vein 
of  amber  in  the  Streckelburg  Moun- 
tain. She  tells  her  father.  They  dare 
not  disclose  their  good  fortune,  but 
secretly  sell  the  treasure,  and,  after 
supplying  their  own  wants,  devote 
the  remaining  money  to  the  relief  of 
the  starving  villagers.  Mary  has  in- 
curred the  ill-will  of  Elsie,  the  real 
witch  of  the  village,  who  takes  advan- 
tage of  her  mysterious  nightly  visits  to 


Scriblenis 


331 


Scudamore 


the  mountain  and  her  stores  of  unex- 
plained wealth  to  accuse  the  maiden 
of  a  compact  with  Satan.  She  is 
tried  and  condemned  to  the  stake. 
Her  lover,  Count  Rudiger  of  Raven- 
stein,  appears  as  her  deliverer  and 
the  story  comes  to  a  triumphant  close 
with  her  happy  marriage. 

Scriblenis  Club,  a  short-lived  asso- 
ciation, founded  in  1714,  which  in- 
cluded among  its  members  many  of 
the  foremost  wits  of  the  Queen  Anne 
period, — Pope,  Swift,  Arbuthnot, 
Congreve,  Atterburg,  Harley,  and 
Gray.  Directly  or  indirectly  it  in- 
spired Arbuthnot's  Memoirs  of  Mar- 
tinus  Scriblerus,  Swift's  Travels  of 
Gulliver,  and  Pope's  Treatise  of 
Bathos. 

Scriblerus,  Cornelius,  the  father 
of  Martinus  (see  below).  A  learned 
gentleman,  an  antiquary  by  profes- 
sion, he  has  eccentric  ideas  on  educa- 
tion. The  boy  is  brought  up  in  such 
manner  that  everything  contributes 
to  the  improvement  of  his  mind,  even 
to  his  dress.  Cornelius  invented  for 
him  "  a  geographical  suit  of  clothes, 
which  might  give  him  some  hints  of 
that  science  and  likewise  some  knowl- 
edge of  the  commerce  of  different 
nations.  He  had  a  French  hat  with 
an  African  feather,  Holland  shirt  and 
Flanders  lace,  English  cloth  lined 
with  Indian  silk;  his  gloves  were 
Italian,  and  his  shoes  were  Spanish. 
He  was  made  to  observe  this  and  daily 
catechised  thereupon,  which  his 
father  was  wont  to  call  travelling  at 
home."  The  Scriblerus  family  may 
have  given  hints  to  Sterne  for  his 
account  of  Tristam  Shandy  and  his 
father. 

Scriblerus,  Martinus,  hero  of  a 
curious  burlesque.  Memoirs  of  the 
Extraordinary  Life,  Works,  and  Dis- 
coveries of  Martinus  Scriblerus,  usually 
published  among  Pope's  works,  but 
known  to  have  been  mainly  written 
by  John  Arbuthnot,  with  occasional 
assistance  from  Pope  and  Swift.  *'  To 
talk  of  Martin  in  any  hands  but 
yours,"  says  Swift  in  a  letter  to 
Arbuthnot,  "  is  folly.  For  you  every 
day  gave  us  better  hints  than  all  of 
us   together  could  do  in  a  twelve- 


month." Pope  explains  that  the 
design  was  to  ridicule  all  the  false 
taste  in  learning,  under  the  character 
of  a  man  of  capacity  that  had  dipped 
into  every  art  and  science,  but  in- 
judiciously in  each.  Under  the  tute- 
lage of  his  father  (see  Scriblerus, 
Cornelius),  Martin  was  brought  up 
a  prig  from  childhood.  He  had  the 
Greek  alphabet  stamped  on  his 
gingerbread,  played  games  after  the 
manner  of  the  ancients,  and  wore  a 
geographical  suit  of  clothes.  He 
became  a  critic,  practised  medicine, 
studied  diseases  of  the  mind,  and 
endeavored  to  discover  the  seat  of 
the  soul.  Then  he  started  on  his 
travels  in  the  countries  visited  by 
Gulliver.  Here  the  work  comes  to  an 
abrupt  end. 

Scrooge,  Ebenezer,  hero  of  Dick- 
ens's Christmas  Carol  (1843),  sur- 
viving partner  of  the  firm  of  Scrooge 
and  Marley,  stockholders.  **  Oh! 
but  he  was  a  tight-fisted  hand  at  the 
grindstone,  Scrooge! — a.  squeezing, 
wrenching,  grasping,  scraping,  clutch- 
ing, covetous  old  sinner!  Hard  and 
sharp  as  flint,  from  which  no  steel 
had  ever  struck  out  generous  fire; 
secret  and  self-contained  and  soli- 
tary as  an  oyster.  .  .  .  He  car- 
ried his  own  low  temperature  always 
about  with  him:  he  iced  his  office  in 
the  dog-days,  and  didn't  thaw  it  one 
degree  at  Christmas."  The  story 
tells  how,  through  the  agency  of  three 
midnight  visitants — the  Ghosts  of 
Christmas  Past,  of  Christmas  Present, 
and  of  Christmas  to-Come — he  was 
converted  into  a  genial  and  benevo- 
lent worshipper  of  the  Christmas 
season. 

Scudamore,  Blythe,  hero  of  Richard 
D.  Blackmore's  novel  of  the  Napo- 
leonic period  in  England,  Spring- 
haven  (1887).  Familiarly  known  as 
"  Scuddy,"  his  behavior  on  land  and 
sea,  in  war  and  in  love,  is  always  brave 
yet  considerate  and  chivalric.  *'  The 
gentle  Scuddy,"  his  creator  calls  him, 
and  proceeds  to  describe  him  as 
"  brave  and  modest,  wholesome  and 
natural,  facing  the  cannon's  mouth 
without  flinching,  and  recklessly 
flinging  down  his  heart  for  a  pretty, 


Scudamour 


332 


Sedley 


His 


foolish   girl   to   trample   on. 
sweetheart  is  Dolly  Darling. 

Scudamour,  Sir,  in  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene,  Book  iv.  His  name  is  cor- 
rupted from  the  words  escu  d'amour, 
the  shield  of  love.  He  was  so  called 
because,  against  twenty  rival  com- 
batants, he  had  secured  for  himself  a 
shield,  hanging  in  the  temple  of 
Venus  over  tlus  inscription:  Who- 
soever BE  THIS  Shield,  Faire 
Amoret  be  his. 

Scythrop,  in  Peacock's  satiric  novel. 
Nightmare  Abbey,  a  caricature  of  the 
poet  Shelley.  Specially  pointed  is 
the  passage  wherein  Scythrop,  loving 
two  ladies  at  once,  tells  his  distracted 
father  that  he  will  free  himself  from 
his  dilemma  by  suicide.  Shelley  him- 
self admitted  the  likeness  and  was 
amused  by  the  caricature.  After  all, 
the  portrait  of  the  man  Shelley  as 
depicted  by  Peacock,  directly  in  his 
Memorials  and  indirectly  in  this  novel, 
is  more  attractive  than  the  "  divine," 
characterless  humanitarian  whom 
hero- worshippers  love  to  paint. 

Sebastian,  in  Twelfth  Night,  a 
yotmg  gentleman,  brother  to  Viola; 
full  of  the  rashness  and  impetuosity 
of  youth.  Another  Sebastian,  a 
dnmken  sailor,  figures  in  The  Tempest. 

Sechard,  David,  in  Balzac's  Lost 
Illusions,  a  tender,  melancholy,  medi- 
tative young  man,  the  friend  of  the 
hero,  Lucien  de  Rubempr^.  He  is 
bom  and  bred  in  the  country,  and 
so  preserves  his  soul  imspotted  from 
the  contaminations  of  the  city,  which 
prove  the  ruin  of  his  friend. 

Sedley,  Amelia,  in  Thackeray's 
Vanity  Fair,  a  sweet-tempered, 
gentle,  generous,  and  deeply  affec- 
tionate young  woman,  who  marries 
George  Osborne,  and  cherishes  his 
memory  after  death,  despite  Major 
Dobbin's  persistent  courtship  of  her 
and  her  growing  fondness  for  him, 
until  Becky  Sharp  disillusionizes  her. 
"  Couldn't  forget  him?  "  cries  Re- 
becca, "  that  selfish  humbug,  that 
low-bred  cockney,  that  padded  booby, 
who  had  neither  wit,  manners,  nor 
heart,  and  was  no  more  to  be  com- 
pared to  your  friend  of  the  bamboo 
cane  than  you  to  Queen  Elizabeth." 


The  character  is  obviously  akin  to  the 
Amelia  Booth  of  Fielding,  but  the 
name  AmeUa  was  that  of  Thackeray's 
grandmother,  and  the  character  was 
modelled  after  three  women  of  his 
own  circle.  "  You  know  you  are 
only  a  piece  of  Amelia,"  Thackeray 
wrote  to  Mrs.  Brookfield.  "  My 
mother  is  another  half;  my  poor  little 
wife — y  est  pour  beaucoup." 

We  hear  that  Emmy  Sedley  was  partly 
suggested  by  Mrs.  Brookfield,  partly  by 
Thackeray's  mother,  much  by  his  own  wife. 
There  scarcely  seems  room  for  so  many  ele- 
ments in  Emmy's  personality.  For  some 
reason  ladies  do  not  love  her,  nor  do  men 
adore  her  .  .  .  She  is  not  clever,  she 
is  not  very  beautiful,  she  is  unhappy,  and 
she  can  be  jealous.  One  pities  her,  and  that 
is  akin  to  a  more  tender  sentiment;  one 
pities  her  while  she  sits  in  the  corner,  and 
Becky's  green  eyes  flatter  her  oaf  of  a  hus- 
band; one  pities  her  in  the  poverty  of  her 
father's  house,  in  the  famous  battle  over 
Daffy's  Elixir,  in  the  separation  from  the 
younger  George  .  .  .  Yes,  Emmy  is 
more  complex  than  she  seems,  and  perhaps 
it  needed  three  ladies  to  contribute  the 
various  elements  of  her  person  and  her 
character. — Andrew  Lang:  Essays  in 
Little. 

Sedley,  Joseph,  commonly  called 
"  Jos,"  the  brother  of  AmeUa,  a  fat 
and  foolish  beau  and  bon  vivant,  lazy, 
peevish,  timid,  boastful,  and  self- 
indulgent.  "  He  was  as  vain  as  a 
girl;  and  perhaps  his  extreme  shyness 
was  one  of  the  results  of  his  extreme 
vanity  "  (chap.  iii).  Timorous  before 
ladies,  yet  with  an  ardent  desire  to 
stand  well  with  them,  he  eagerly 
welcomes  the  overtures  of  his  sister's 
friend  Becky  Sharp,  but  is  frightened 
off  just  as  he  had  decided  to  propose 
to  her.  Fond  of  the  military,  he 
wears  moustachios  and  a  frogged 
coat  and  accompanies  the  army  to 
Brussels,  but  flees  terror-stricken 
while  the  battle  of  Waterloo  is  raging. 
On  his  return  to  India,  he  brags  so 
much  of  what  he  had  seen  and  heard 
and  done  on  the  fateful  day,  that  he 
acquired  quite  a  reputation  for  cour- 
age among  the  ignorant  and  was 
dubbed  Waterloo  Sedley.  He  is  not 
ungenerous  or  tmkindly,  he  befriends 
Amelia  in  her  poverty,  and  in  the 
end  falls  a  victim  to  the  middle-aged 
wiles  of  his  former  flame,  Becky 
Sharp. 


Selika 


Senta 


Selika,  heroine  of  a  five-act  opera, 
VAfricaine  (1865),  words  by  Eugene 
Scribe,  music  by  Meyerbeer.  She  is 
the  queen  of  an  island  off  the  African 
coast,  who  falls  in  love  with  Vasco  da 
Gama,  the  Portuguese  explorer,  and 
immolates  herself  for  his  sake. 

Selim,  name  of  the  hero  of  Byron's 
poem,  The  Bride  of  Abydos  (see 
Zuleika),  and  also  of  Moore's  The 
Light  of  the  Harem  in  Lalla  Rookh 
(see  Nourmahal).  Edward  Moore, 
in  a  poem  called  Selim  the  Persian 
(1748),  makes  an  ironical  defence  of 
Lord  Lyttleton  under  this  name. 

Selkirk,  Alexander  (i 676-1 723),  a 
Scotch  sailor,  whose  story  gave 
Daniel  Defoe  the  suggestion  for 
Robinson  Crusoe.  His  captain,  one 
StraddHng,  took  ofifence  at  him,  and 
left  him  on  the  uninhabited  island  of 
Juan  Fernandez  in  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
where  he  remained  for  four  years  and 
four  months  (i  704-1 708),  until  res- 
cued by  Captain  Woods  Rogers. 
Hence  Juan  Fernandez  has  often, 
but  wrongfully,  been  called  Crusoe's 
Island  (see  Crusoe).  Alexander 
Selkirk  is  the  subject  of  a  famous 
lyric  by  William  Cowper,  beginning: 

I  am  monarch  of  all  I  survey. 
My  right  there  is  none  to  dispute. 

Sellers,  Col.  Mulberry,  chief  char- 
acter in  The  Gilded  Age,  a  novel  by 
Mark  Twain  and  Charles  Dudley 
Warner,  which  was  dramatized  in 
1876,  with  John  T.  Raymond  in  this 
part.  There  is  a  suggestion  of 
Micawber  in  Sellers,  and  it  is  curious 
to  find,  from  Paine's  Life  of  Mark 
Twain,  that  Twain's  father,  like 
Dickens's,  was  of  the  Micawber  ilk. 
But  Mr.  Clemens,  Sr.,  had  only  the 
gloomy  side  of  Micawber.  The  gay 
and  buoyant  side  was  quite  alien  to 
that  unhappy  man.  Mark  Twain's 
invincible  optimist.  Col.  Sellers,  was 
not  his  father,  but  his  mother's 
favorite  cousin,  James  Lampton. 

Many  persons  regarded  "  Colonel  Sellers  " 
as  a  fiction,  an  invention,  an  extravagant 
impossibility,  and  did  me  the  honor  to  call 
him  a  "creation";  but  they  were  mistaken. 
I  merely  put  him  on  paper  as  he  was;  he 
was  not  a  person  who  could  be  exaggerated. 
The  incidents  which  looked  most  extrava- 


gant, both  in  the  book  and  on  the  stage,  were 
not  inventions  of  mine  but  were  facts  of  his 
life;  and  I  was  present  when  they  were 
developed.  John  T.  Raymond's  audiences 
used  to  come  near  to  dying  with  laughter 
over  the  turnip-eating  scene;  but,  extrava- 
gant as  the  scene  was,  it  was  faithful  to  the 
facts,  in  all  its  absurd  details.  The  thing 
happened  in  Lampton's  own  house,  and  I 
was  present.  In  fact  I  was  myself  the  guest 
who  ate  the  turnips.  In  the  hands  of  a  great 
actor  that  piteous  scene  would  have  dimmed 
any  manly  spectator's  eyes  with  tears,  and 
racked  his  ribs  apart  with  laughter  at  the 
same  time.  But  Raymond  was  great  in 
humorous  portrayal  only.  In  that  he  was 
superb,  he  was  wonderful — in  a  word,  great; 
in  all  things  else  he  was  a  pigmy  of  the 
pigmies. 

The  real  Colonel  Sellers,  as  I  knew  him 
in  James  Lampton,  was  a  pathetic  and  beau- 
tiful spirit,  a  manly  man,  a  straight  and 
honorable  man,  a  man  with  a  big,  foolish, 
unselfish  heart  in  his  bosom,  a  man  bom  to 
be  loved;  and  he  was  loved  by  all  his  friends, 
and  by  his  family  worshipped.  It  is  the 
right  word.  To  them  he  was  but  little  less 
than  a  god.  The  real  Colonel  Sellers  was 
never  on  the  stage.  Only  half  of  him  was 
there.  Raymond  could  not  play  the  other 
half  of  him;  it  was  above  his  level.  That 
half  was  made  up  of  qualities  of  which 
Raymond  was  wholly  destitute. — Mark 
Twain:  Chapters  from  My  Autobiography, 
North  American  Review. 

Senta,  in  the  opera  of  The  Flying 
Dutchman,^  is  an  interpolation  by 
Wagner  himself  in  order  to  add  a 
love  element  to  the  mediaeval  legend. 
According  to  this  version  of  the  story, 
the  Dutchman  is  allowed  once  in 
every  seven  years  to  come  on  shore, 
with  the  chance  of  ridding  himself 
from  his  curse  if  he  can  find  a  woman 
willing  to  devote  herself  to  him  with 
her  whole  heart.  The  experiment  is 
fraught  with  considerable  danger  to 
the  woman,  for,  if  she  breaks  faith, 
her  punishment  is  nothing  less  than 
eternal  perdition.  Herr  Wagner  has 
made  Senta  quite  ready  to  fall  in 
love  with  the  doomed^  Van  der 
Decken,  having  long  been  in  love  with 
a  portrait  of  him  which  hangs  in  her 
father's  house.  But  she  has  been 
betrothed  to  Erik  until  the  moment 
of  the  Dutchman's  appearance,  when 
she  cheerfully  throws  over  her  former 
lover;  and  it  is  only  a  misunderstand- 
ing which  prevents  the  Dutchman 
marrying  her  and  living  happily  ever 
afterward.  The  rapidity  with  which 
Senta  transfers  her  love  from  Erik 
to  the  Dutchman  tends  to  injure  a 


Sentry 


334 


Shakespeare 


character  of  much  beauty;  and  the 
eagerness  with  which  Daland,  her 
father,  accepts  as  his  son-in-law  a 
mysterious  stranger  who  carries  about 
with  him  a  chest  full  of  treasure, 
gives  a  somewhat  disagreeable  aspect 
to  the  character  of  the  proverbially 
bold  and  open-hearted  seaman. 

Sentry,  Captain,  a  member  of  the 
fictitious  Spectator  Club,  which  was 
supposed  to  look  after  the  fortunes 
of  that  paper.  The  character  was 
sketched  by  Sir  Richard  Steele  in  the 
opening  number  and  subsequently 
filled  out  by  both  Addison  and 
Steele.  The  original  of  this  character 
was  Colonel  Kempenfelt,  of  Sweden, 
father  of  an  admiral  in  the  British 
navy  who  was  lost  with  all  his  crew, 
on  board  the  Royal  George. 

Sevier,  Dr.,  hero  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  (1883)  by  George  W.  Cable,  a 
benevolent,  upright,  and  severely 
strict  physician  of  New  Orleans. 
"  His  inner  heart  was  all  of  flesh," 
we  are  told,  "  but  his  demands  for 
the  rectitude  of  mankind  pointed  out 
like  the  muzzles  of  cannon  through 
the  embrasure  of  his  virtues." 

Sewell,  Rev.  Mr.,  in  W.  D. 
Howells's  novel,  The  Minister's 
Charge  (1887),  the  titular  "  minister," 
whose  amiable  habit  of  telling  pleas- 
ant fibs  brings  Lemuel  down  to 
Boston  with  impossible  expectations 
and  illusions. 

He  ministers  to  a  very  respectable  Boston 
flock;  he  is  sincere,  in  spite  of  his  amiable 
fibs:  he  wishes  to  do  right  and  to  be  father 
confessor  to  his  people,  without  the  faintest 
knowledge  of  moral  theology  or  any  training 
for  the  work  except  a  good  heart  and  some 
experiences  of  the  human  race  in  general 
and  the  Bostonian  in  particular. — Catholic 
World. 

Seyton,  Catherine,  heroine  of 
Scott's  historical  romance,  The  Ab- 
bot, a  "  waiting  damsel  "  to  Mary, 
Queen  of  Scots,  who  inspired  Roland 
Graeme  with  an  enthusiasm  for  "  the 
good  cause  "  as  loyal  and  lofty  as  her 
own. 

Sganarelle,  one  of  Moli^re's  most 
famous  characters,  who  made  his 
first  appearance  in  a  farce  called 
Sganarelle,  or  the  Imaginary  Cuckold, 
and  was  afterward  introduced  into 


other  plays,  with  somewhat  varying 
characteristics  according  to  the  needs 
of  the  story, — i.e.,  Le  Festin  de  Pierre, 
where  he  is  valet  to  Don  Juan; 
L Amour  Medecin  (1664),  where  he 
is  father  to  Lucinde;  Le  Medecin 
Malgre  Lui,  where  he  is  the  husband 
of  Martine  and  a  wood-chopper  forced 
to  assume  the  character  of  a  physician ; 
UJ^cole  des  Maris,  where,  with  his 
brother  Ariste,  he  brings  up  two 
orphan  sisters  so  as  to  train  them  into 
model  wives  for  themselves  and  both 
are  wofully  deceived;  and  Le  Mari- 
age  Force,  which,  though  later  in  pro- 
duction than  the  Cocu  Imaginaire,  is 
logically  earlier,  since  the  latter  now 
forms  the  sequel. 

Like  Harlequin  or  Ptmch,  Sgana- 
relle in  fact  is  rather  an  abstraction  or 
type  of  character  than  an  individual, 
and  his  various  avatars  are  irreconcil- 
able the  one  with  the  other. 

Moli^re's  Sganarelle,  under  all  his  various 
aspects  of  valet,  of  husband,  of  father  to 
Lucinde,  of  brother  to  Ariste,  of  teacher,  of 
wood-chopper,  of  doctor,  is  a  character  who 
belongs  wholly  to  the  poet,  as  Panurge  be- 
longs to  Rabelais,  Falstaff  to  Shakespeare, 
Sancho  to  Cervantes;  he  is  the  ugly  side  of 
humanity  personified ;  the  odd,  surly ,  morose, 
selfish,  low,  cowardly  side;  alternately 
cringing  and  charlatanic,  peevish  and 
absurd, — the  nasty  side  which  excites 
derision.  In  certain  joyous  moments,  as 
when  Sganarelle  touches  the  nurse's  bosom, 
he  resembles  the  portly  Gorgibus,  who,  in 
his  turn,  reminds  one  of  Chrysale,  that  other 
jolly   round-bellied   humorist.      Sganarelle, 

f)altry  and  pitiful  as  Panurge,  has  neverthe- 
ess  managed  to  leave  behind  him  a  posterity 
worthy  of  both,  among  whom  we  must  re- 
member Panglosa  and  not  forget  Gringoire. 
— St.  Beuve. 

Shafton,  Sir  Piercie,  in  Scott's 
historical  romance,  The  Monastery,  a 
relative  of  the  Duke  of  Northumber- 
land on  one  side,  on  the  other  a  grand- 
son of  old  Overstich  the  tailor.  He 
affects  the  "  euphuistic "  style  of 
conversation  in  fashion  at  the  Eliza- 
bethan courts,  but  rather  overdoes 
it  and  degenerates  into  too  obvious 
burlesque.  In  spite  of  his  affectations 
he  is  capable  of  genuine  energy  of 
mind,  and  his  chivalrous  companion- 
ship with  Mysie  of  the  Mill  proved 
him  worthy  of  her  simple  devotion. 

Shakespeare,  William,  the  poet- 
dramatist,  is  the  hero  of  W.  S.  Lan- 


Shallow 


335 


Sharp 


dor's  dramatic  colloquy,  The  Exami- 
nation of  Shakespeare  for  Deer-stealing 
(1834). 

No  play  of  character  more  sparkling 
occurs  in  any  of  Landor's  writings  than  is 
struck  out  by  the  conjunction  of  such  oppo- 
site types  as  are  here  presented, — the  boy- 
poet,  overflowing  with  genius,  emotion,  and 
animal  spirits,  witty,  wise,  joyous,  and 
serious  by  turns;  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  the 
justice,  stupid,  vain,  devout,  and  kind- 
hearted;  Master  Silas,  the  chaplain,  hard- 
headed,  vulgar,  malicious,  and  sensual; 
Joseph  Camaby,  the  chief  witness,  super- 
stitious and  hypocritical,  conscious  of  his 
tattered  reputation  while  speaking  truth 
for  the  nonce.  Inimitable,  too,  is  the  de- 
scription of  Shakespeare's  tactics  with  the 
justice,  whom  he  handles  after  the  manner 
of  an  angler,  baiting  his  hook  with  tempting 
morsels  of  flattery,  and  spinning  out  a  line 
of  interminable  digression,  which  he  adroitly 
manoeuvres  until  his  prey  Is  caught. 

Shallow,  Justice  Robert,  sketched 
at  full  length  in  Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor  (1598),  appeared  earlier  in 
//  Henry  IV  (1598)  and  later  in 
Henry  V  (1599).  He  is  a  fool,  a 
braggart,  and  a  liar,  boasting  of  sins 
in  his  youth  which  he  never  com- 
mitted. It  has  been  plausibly  sur- 
mised that  the  justice  is  a  reminiscent 
caricature  of  Shakespeare's  boyhood 
enemy.  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  of  Charl- 
cote,  near  Stratford,  who  prosecuted 
him  for  deer-stealing  and  incidentally 
drove  him  from  Stratford  to  London. 

Shandy,  Captain  Tobias,  better 
known  as  Uncle  Toby,  the  real  hero 
of  Sterne's  Tristram  Shandy,  a  cap- 
tain in  the  British  army,  retired  in 
consequence  of  wounds  received  at 
the  siege  of  Namur,  but  still  keeping 
up  his  military  tastes,  interests,  and 
habits.  Gallantry,  simplicity,  mod- 
esty, and  benevolence  are  his  leading 
traits.  He  is  supposed  to  have  been 
drawn  from  the  author's  father,  who 
was  an  army  lieutenant. 

What  shall  I  say  to  thee,  thou  quintes- 
sence of  the  milk  of  human  kindness,  thou 
reconciler  of  war  (as  far  as  it  was  once  neces- 
sary to  reconcile  it) ,  thou  returner  to  child- 
hood during  peace,  thou  lover  of  widows, 
thou  master  of  the  best  of  corporals,  thou 
whistler    at    excommunications,    thou    high 


and  only   final   Christian   gentleman,  thou 

?itier   of  the    Devil   himself,    divine   Uncle 
'oby!     Why,  this  I  will  say.  made  bold  by 


thy  example,  and  caring  nothing  for  what 
anybody  may  think  of  it  who  does  not,  in 
some  measure,  partake  of  thy  nature,  that 


pj 
th 


he  who  created  thee  was  the  wisest  man  since 


the  days  of  Shakespeare;  and  that  Shake- 
speare himself,  mighty  reflector  of  things 
as  they  were,  but  no  anticipator,  never 
arrived  at  a  character  Uke  thine. — Leigh 
Hunt. 

My  Uncle  Toby  is  one  of  the  finest  com- 
pliments ever  paid  to  human  nature.  He 
is  the  most  unoffending  of  God's  creatures; 
or,  as  the  French  express  it,  un  tel  petit 
bonhotnme!  Of  his  bowling-green,  his  sieges, 
and  his  amours,  who  would  say  or  tlunk 
anything  amiss? — Hazlitt. 

Shandy,  Tristram,  the  nominal 
hero  of  the  novel  of  that  name  by 
Laurence  Sterne. 

Shandy,  Walter,  in  Sterne's  novel, 
Tristram  Shandy,  the  father  of  the 
titular  hero. 

The  author  supposed  in  him  a  man  of  an 
active  and  metaphysical,  but,  at  the  same 
time,  a  whimsical  cast  of  mind,  whom  too 
much  and  too  miscellaneous  reading  had 
brought  within  a  step  or  two  of  madness, 
and  who  acted,  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of 
life,  upon  the  absurd  theories  adopted  by 
the  pedants  of  past  ages.  He  is  most  ad- 
mirable contrasted  with  his  wife,  well  de- 
scribed as  a  good  lady  of  the  poco-curante 
school,  who  neither  obstructed  the  course 
of  her  husband's  hobby-horse — to  use  a 
phrase  which  Sterne  has  rendered  classical 
— nor  could  be  prevailed  upon  to  spare  him 
the  least  admiration  for  the  grace  and  dex- 
terity with  which  he  managed  it. — Sir 
Walter  Scott. 

There  has  been  a  great  deal  said  and  writ- 
ten about  the  plagiarisms  of  Sterne;  but  the 
only  real  plagiarism  he  has  been  guilty  of 
(if  such  theft  were  a  crime)  is  in  taking 
Tristram  Shandy's  father  from  Martin's, 
the  elder  Scriblerus.  The  original  idea  of 
the  character,  that  is,  of  the  opinionated, 
captious  old  gentleman  who  is  pedantic,  not 
from  profession,  but  choice,  belongs  to 
Arbuthnot. — Hazlitt. 

Sharp,  Rebecca,  more  familiarly 
known  as  Becky,  the  chief  female 
character  in  Thackeray's  Vanity 
Fair.  A  friendless  girl,  with  "  the 
dismal  precocity  of  poverty,"  she 
early  determines  to  marry  well  and 
make  her  way  in  the  world.  Her 
first  mark  is  Joseph  Sedley,  brother 
of  her  school  friend  Amelia;  but  he  is 
frightened  away.  She  next  sets  her 
cap  for  Rawdon  Crawley,  whom  she 
wins,  and  learns  too  late  that  she 
might  have  had  his  wealthy  father 
and  that  he  himself  is  disinherited  on 
account  of  his  marriage.  Neverthe- 
less, she  sets  up  an  establishment,  and 
shows  him  how  by  cleverness  and 
tact  and  cajoling  her  admirers  she 


She 


Shipton 


can  maintain  a  social  position,  and 
by  wheedling  and  mining  her  trades- 
man she  can  live  on  nothing  a  year. 
Rawdon  detects  her  in  an  intrigue 
with  Lord  Steyne.  Though  she 
stoutly  maintains  her  innocence,  he 
obtains  a  separation  from  her.  She 
sinks  to  a  tawdry  bohemian  existence 
on  the  Continent  until  Joseph  Sedley 
once  more  falls  in  her  way.  She  strips 
him  of  all  he  has  and  comes  into^  his 
insurance  money  after  his  suspicious 
death. 

A  friend  congratulated  him  once  on  that 
touch  in  Vanity  Fair  in  which  Becky  admires 
her  husband  when  he  is  giving  Steyne  the 
punishment  that  is  ruining  her  for  life. 
"Well,"  he  said,  "when  I  wrote  the  sentence, 
I  slapped  my  fist  on  the  table  and  said, 
'That  is  a  touch  of  geniusl'" — ^James  T. 
Fields:    Yesterdays  with  Authors,  p.  27. 

She,  abbreviated  from  "She- who 
must-be-obeyed,"  the  ofi&cial  title  of 
Ayesha,  heroine  of  Rider  Haggard's 
romance  She  (1887).  Ayesha  is  a 
beautiful  sorceress,  dwelling  some- 
where in  the  darkest  deeps  of  darkest 
Africa,  who  is  reputed  to  be  immor- 
tal and  is  surrounded  by  retainers  as 
weird  as  herself.  Two  thousand  years 
ago,  it  appears,  she  had  treacherously 
compassed  the  death  of  a  priest  of 
Isis,  whose  descendant,  a  young  Eng- 
lishman named  Leo  Vincey,  pene- 
trates her  fastnesses  and  fascinates 
her  by  his  hereditary  likeness.  He 
too  falls  in  love  with  her,  but,  the 
cycle  having  been  rounded,  she  is 
consumed  in  the  mystic  flames  she 
herself  had  evoked  to  renew  her 
youth. 

Sheppardi  John,  familiarly  known 
as  Jack,  a  famous  English  highway 
robber  (i 702-1 724),  hero  of  numerous 
ballads  and  imaginative  works;  nota- 
bly Harlequin  Sheppard  (1725),  a 
pantomime  by  John  Thurmond,  a 
pretended  autobiography  attributed 
to  Defoe  (1724),  and  a  novel,  Jack 
Sheppard  (1839),  by  William  Harrison 
Ainsworth.  A  carpenter  by  trade, 
Sheppard  sprang  from  a  long  line  of 
honest  carpenters  in  Stepney.  In 
early  youth  he  fell  in  with  a  loose 
woman,  Elizabeth  Lyon,  known  as 
"  Edgeworth  Bess,"  who  with  another 
girl,   "Poll  Maggott,"   incited  most 


of  his  crimes.  His  recklessness,  his 
courage,  and  his  generous  disposition 
made  him  a  sort  of  popular  hero. 
He  made  two  remarkable  escapes 
from  Newgate,  excellently  described 
in  Ainsworth's  romance,  though  the 
most  famous  of  these  two  chapters 
is  said  to  have  been  written  by 
William  Maginn.  Two  hundred 
thousand  people  attended  his  execu- 
tion at  Tyburn,  November  16,  1724. 

Sheva,  hero  of  R.  Ctimberland's 
comedy  The  Jew  (1776),  written  to 
justify  the  Hebrew  race  from  current 
Christian  calumnies.  He  is  rescued 
by  Don  Carlos  from  an  auto-da-fe  at 
Cadiz  and  brought  to  London,  where 
the  don's  son,  Charles  Ratcliffe, 
rescues  him  in  turn  from  a  howling 
London  mob.  In  return  Sheva  makes 
Charles  his  heir  and  gives  his  sister 
£10,000  as  her  marriage  portion  when 
she  weds  Frederick  Bertram.  ^  Modest, 
benevolent,  and  philanthropic,  Sheva 
is  "  the  widow's  friend,  the  orphans' 
father,  the  poor  man's  protector,  and 
the  universal  dispenser  of  charity; 
but  he  ever  shrank  to  let  his  left 
hand  know  what  his  right  hand  did." 
The  Jews  of  England  made  up  a 
handsome  purse  for  Cumberland  to 
reward  him  for  this  championship  of 
their  race. 

In  the  Old  Testament  Sheva  was 
one  of  David's  scribes  (2  Sam.  xx, 
25).  Dryden  and  Tate,  in  Absalom 
and  Achitophel,  Part  II  (1682),  bestow 
the  name  upon  Sir  Roger  Lestrange, 
censor  of  the  press  under  Charles  II 
and  editor  of  the  Ohservator,  an  un- 
swerving royalist  sheet.  Dryden 
says: 

Than  Sheva,  none   more    loyal   zeal  have 

shown. 
Wakeful  as  Judah's  lion  for  the  throne. 

Shipton,  Mother,  the  name  of  a 
famous  prophetess  in  the  reign  of 
Henry  VIII,  who  is  said  to  have  suc- 
cessfully predicted  the  death  of  many 
famous  men.  Bret  Harte  gives  the 
nickname  to  one  of  the  characters  in 
his  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,  a  woman  of 
ill  fame  who  starves  herself  to  save 
a  younger  outcast.  (See  Shipton, 
Mother,  in  vol.  11.) 


Shore 


337 


Sikes 


Shore,  Jane,  an  historical  character 
{circa  1450-1527),  who  in  1470  for- 
sook her  husband,  William  Shore,  to 
become  the  mistress  of  Edward  IV. 
She  had  great  influence  over  that 
king  through  her  wit,  tact,  and  merry 
disposition.  After  Edward's  death 
she  was  accused  of  harlotry  and  witch- 
craft by  Richard  III  and  forced  to  do 
penance  in  the  public  streets,  "  going 
before  the  crosse  in  procession  upon  a 
Sonday  with  a  taper  in  her  hand." 
She  is  the  heroine  of  a  ballad  preserved 
in  Percy's  Reliques,  of  an  anonymous 
drama.  History  of  the  Life  and  Death 
of  Master  Shore  and  Jane  Shore  his 
Wife,  and  of  a  more  famous  tragedy, 
Jane  Shore  (1714),  by  Nicholas  Rowe. 
Rowe  makes  her  husband  come  to 
Jane's  rescue  in  her  downfall,  but  he 
is  seized  by  the  minions  of  Richard 
and  Jane  dies. 

Shylock,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy 
The  Merchant  of  Venice,  a  Jew  usurer. 
He  hates  Antonio,  partly  for  reviling 
his  religion,  but  more  especially  for 
that  he  spoils  his  business  by  lowering 
the  rates  of  interest  in  Venice.  There- 
fore, when  Antonio  comes  to  borrow 
money  from  him,  he  half  jestingly 
ensnares  him  into  a  compact  whereby 
the  borrower  shall  lose  a  pound  of 
flesh  if  the  debt  be  not  promptly 
retiu-ned  at  a  given  time.  Shylock's 
impassioned  appeal  in  Act  iii,  i,  is 
almost  the  only  scene  where  Shake- 
speare shows  any  sympathy  for  him. 

The  diverse  Interpretations  given  by 
notable  actors  to  the  part  of  Shylock  have 
their  origin  in  a  certain  incongruity  between 
the  story  that  Shakespeare  accepted  and 
the  character  of  the  Jew  as  it  came  to  life 
in  his  hands.  Some  actors,  careful  of  the 
story,  have  laid  stress  on  revenge,  cunning, 
and  the  thirst  for  innocent  blood.  Others, 
convinced  by  Shakespeare's  sympathy,  have 
presented  so  sad  and  human  a  figure  that 
the  verdict  of  the  court  is  accepted  without 
enthusiasm  .  .  .  The  difficulty  is  in 
the  play.  The  Jew  of  the  story  is  the  mon- 
ster of  the  mediaeval  imagination,  and  the 
story  almost  requires  such  a  monster,  if  it 
is  to  go  with  ringing  effect  on  the  stage. 
Shylock  is  a  man,  and  a  man  more  sinned 
against  than  sinning.  Antonio  and  Bassanio 
are  pale  shadows  of  men  compared  with  this 
gaunt,  tragic  figure,  whose  love  of  his  race 
is  as  deep  as  life;  who  pleads  the  cause  of  a 
common  humanity  against  the  cruelties  of 
prejudice;  whose  very  hatred  has  in  it  some- 
thing of  the  nobility  of  patriotic  passion; 


whose  heart  is  stirred  with  tender  memories 
even  in  the  midst  of  his  lament  over  the 
stolen  ducats;  who  in  the  end,  is  dismissed, 
unprotesting,  to  insult  and  oblivion. — 
Walter  Raleigh:    Shakespeare. 

Sidonia,  in  Disraeli's  novel  of  Con- 
ingsby,  or  The  New  Generation  (1844) 
a  character  in  whom  the  author  paints 
his  ideal  Jew.  It  is  drawn  partly  from 
the  actual  traits  and  deeds  of  Baron 
Alfred  de  Rothschild  and  partly  from 
the  undeveloped  possibiHties  which 
the  author  discovered  in  himself  at 
his  then  age  of  thirty-nine.  Sidonia's 
function  in  the  novel  is  to  educate 
Harry  Coningsby,  as  Harry  in  his 
turn  is  to  educate  the  New  Genera- 
tion. 

Sidonia  is  a  Hebrew  of  immense  fortune 
in  the  prime  of  youthful  manhood  and  with 
an  athletic  frame  which  sickness  has  never 
tried;  affable  and  gracious  but,  though 
unreserved  in  manner,  impenetrable  beneath 
the  surface;  and  yet  with  a  rare  gift  of  ex- 

f)ression  and  an  intellect  that,  matured  by 
ong  meditation,  and  assisted  by  that  abso- 
lute freedom  from  prejudice  which  is  the 
compensatory  possession  of  a  man  without 
a  country,  enables  him  to  fathom,  as  it 
were  by  intuition,  the  depth  of  every  ques- 
tion.— Monypenny:  Life  of  Benjamin 
Disraeli. 

Siegliere,     Mademoiselle    de    la, 

heroine  and  title  of  a  novel  by  Jules 
Sandeau. 

Very  good  again  is  Mademoiselle  de  la 
Siegliere,  with  its  curious  theme  of  an  en- 
riched peasant  driven  by  aristocratic  wiles 
to  restore  to  his  old  seigneur  the  estate  which 
the  latter  has  forfeited  by  emigration. — 
George  Saintsbury. 

Sigismunda  or  Sigismonda,  heroine 
of  Dryden's  poem  Sigismunda  and 
Guiscardo.     (See  vol.  11.) 

Sikes,  Bill,  in  Dickens's  Oliver 
Twist,  a  brutal  thief  and  house- 
breaker, who  murders  his  mistress, 
Nancy. 

A  thoroughly  hardened  ruffian  of  the 
sturdy  English  type,  with  a  sullen  ferocity 
which  penetrates  his  whole  nature  and  allies 
him  to  his  true  brethren,  the  beasts  of  prey; 
there  is  no  room  in  his  breast  for  conscience, 
or  pity,  or  physical  fear;  his  attendant  and 
moral  shadow,  the  dog,  has  a  character 
seemingly  caught  from  that  of  his  master; 
or  perhaps  we  should  say  that  Sikes  the  dog 
appears  to  have  been  arrested  in  that  process 
of  evolution  which,  when  allowed  free  course, 
resulted  in  the  production  of  Sikes  the  man. 
The  account  of  the  murder  of  Nancy  is  one 


Silva 


338 


Skimpole 


of  the  most  harrowing  scenes  in  romance; 
and  there  is  great  power  displayed  in  the 
description  of  Sikes's  flight  afterwards,  with 
the  phantom  of  his  victim  pursuing  him,  the 
"widely-staring  eyes,  so  lustreless  and 
glassy , ' '  meeting  his  at  every  turn.  Dickens , 
when  writing  these  scenes,  realized  them  so 
intensely  that  they  may  be  said  to  have 
taken  possession  of  him.  When  he  read  the 
account  of  the  murder  of  Nancy  to  his  wife, 
she  became  so  affected  that  he  describes 
her  as  being  "in  an  unspeakable  state." — 
E.  P.  Whipple. 

Silva,  Don,  in  George  Eliot's  dra- 
matic poem,  The  Spanish  Gypsy 
(1868),  a  nobleman  in  love  with 
Fedalma.  A  beautiful  and  elaborate 
portrait,  in  which  the  author  has 
aimed  to  depict  a  young  nobleman  as 
splendid  in  person  and  in  soul  as  the 
dawning  splendor  of  his  native  coun- 
try. In  spite  of  the  poem  being 
called  in  honor  of  his  mistress,  Don 
Silva  is  really  the  central  figure  in  the 
work. 

Silver,  John,  the  principal  char- 
acter in  R.  L.  Stevenson's  romance, 
Treasure  Island  (1883).  The  Satur- 
day Review  declared  that  the  book 
ought  to  have  been  entitled  John 
Silver,  Pirate,  and  in  fact  Stevenson 
had  originally  called  it  the  Sea- Cook, 
For  Jolm  Silver,  pirate  by  profession, 
sailed  as  sea-cook  aboard  the  His- 
paniola  when  she  started  out  on  a 
search  for  Flint's  buried  hoard  in 
Treasure  Island. 

He  is  a  big  fellow,  "very  tall  and  strong, 
with  a  face  as  big  as  a  ham;  plain  and  pale, 
but  intelligent  and  smiling;"  his  left  leg  is 
cut  off  at  the  hip,  and  he  carries  a  crutch, 
which  he  manages  "with  wonderful  dexter- 
ity, hopping  about  on  it  like  a  bird."  He 
has  travelled  all  the  world  over;  he  has  a 
black  wife;  he  is  master  of  a  parrot  named 
Captain  Flint;  he  is  so  helpful  and  clever, 
so  smooth-spoken  and  powerful  and  charm- 
ing, that  everybody  is  deceived  in  him.  Of 
course  he  makes  himself  the  most  useful  of 
men  while  the  ship  is  fitting  out,  and  of 
course  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  crew 
are  of  his  discovery  anci  recommendation. 
The  consequences  are  plain  to  the  meanest 
capacity.  There  is  a  mutiny,  and  they  hoist 
the  black  flag,  the  noble  Jolly  Roger;  there 
are  fights  and  murders  and  adventures;  only 
a  few  of  the  expedition  escape  with  their 
lives;  and  it  is  all  John  Silver's  doing. — 
Saturday  Review,  December  8,  1883. 

Simple,  David,  hero  of  a  novel  by 
Sarah  Fielding,  The  Adventures  of 
David  Simple  (1744),  who  travels 
through  London  and  Westminster 
"  in  search  of  a  faithful  friend." 


A  sequel.  The  Familiar  Letters  between  the 
Principal  Characters  in  David  Simple  (1747), 
was  the  occasion  for  a  famous  contrast 
which  Samuel  Richardson,  in  a  letter  dated 
December,  1756,  drew  between  Susan  and 
her  brother,  Henry  Fielding.  "What  a 
knowledge  of  the  human  heart !  Well  might 
a  critical  judge  of  writing  say,  as  he  did  to 
me,  that  your  late  brother's  knowledge  of  it 
was  not  (fine  writer  as  he  was)  comparable 
to  yours.  His  was  but  as  the  knowledge  of 
the  outside  of  a  clock-work  machine,  while 
yours  was  that  of  all  the  finer  springs  and 
movements  of  the  inside."  Curiously 
enough,  this  is  very  much  the  praise  which, 
a  dozen  years  later,  Johnson,  no  doubt  the 
critical  judge  referred  to,  gave  to  Richardson 
himself.  "There  was  as  great  a  difference 
between  them  [Richardson  and  Fielding]," 
he  said,  "as  between  a  man  who  knew  how 
a  watch  was  made,  and  a  man  who  could 
tell  the  hour  by  looking  on  the  dial-plate." 

Simplicissimus,  in  an  historical 
romance  of  that  name  by  J.  C.  von 
Grimmelshausen  (1669),  is  the  son  of 
a  poor  Spessart  farmer  during  the 
Thirty  Years'  War.  At  ten  years  of 
age  his  father  is  murdered  by  a  band 
of  plundering  soldiers.  He  is  edu- 
cated by  a  hermit,  he  serves  as  page 
to  an  officer,  he  turns  hermit  himself 
and  earns  a  reputation  for  sanctity 
while  really  supporting  himself  by 
swindling.  Next  he  finds  a  congenial 
sphere  of  activity  in  the  German 
army.  The  wild  license  of  the  soldiery 
and  the  consequent  sufferings  of  the 
peasantry  are  vividly  painted.  After 
numerous  ups  and  downs  and  two 
unfortunate  marital  experiences,  he 
retires  from  the  world,  and  goes  to 
a  desert  island  where  he  anticipates 
some  of  the  experiences  of  Robinson 
Crusoe. 

Skeggs,  Miss  Caroline  Wilhelmina 
Amelia,  in  Goldsmith's  Vicar  of 
Wakefield  (1766),  the  companion  of 
"  Lady  Blarney,"  both  being  London 
courtesans  whom  Squire  Thornhill 
introduces  to  the  Primrose  family  to 
aid  him  in  beguiling  the  daughters 
of  the  house. 

Skewton,  Mrs.,  in  Dickens's  novel 
of  Domhey  and  Son,  is  the  mother  of 
Edith,  afterwards  Mrs.  Dombey. 

Skimpole,  Harold,  in  Dickens's 
Bleak  House  (1852),  an  artist,  buoy- 
ant, gay,  brilliant,  and  ingenuously 
unscrupulous  in  money  matters. 
Dickens  rather  lamely  -sought  to 
defend  himself  from  the  charge  of 


Slawken-Bergius 


339 


Slote 


having  caricatured  Leigh  Hunt  in  this 
character. 

"  Exactly  those  graces  and  charms 
of  manner  which  are  remembered," 
says  Dickens,  "  in  the  words  we  have 
quoted,  were  remembered  by  the 
author  of  the  work  of  fiction  in  ques- 
tion when  he  drew  the  character  in 
question.  He  no  more  thought,  God 
forgive  him!  that  the  admired  original 
would  ever  be  charged  "  [as  he  fre- 
quently was  charged]  "  with  the 
imaginary  vices  of  the  fictitious  crea- 
ture than  he  has  himself  ever  thought 
of  charging  the  blood  of  Desdemona 
and  Othello  on  the  innocent  Academy 
model  who  sat  for  lago's  leg  in  the 
picture." 

Slawken-Bergius,  an  imaginary 
author  of  a  work  on  Noses,  himself 
distinguished  by  a  nose  of  phenomenal 
length,  who  was  invented  by  Sterne 
in  order  that  he  might  pretend  to 
quote  from  his  works  a  curious  tale 
about  a  man  with  an  enormous  nose. 

Slaygood,  Giant,  in  Bunyan's  Pil- 
grim's Progress^  Part  i,  the  master  of 
a  gang  of  thieves  infesting  the  public 
highway.  He  fell  upon  Feeblemind 
and  might  have  killed  him,  but  that 
Mr.  Greatheart  came  to  the  rescue 
of  Feeblemind  and  slew  Giant 
Slaygood. 

Sleary,  in  Dickens's  Hard  Times 
(1854),  the  proprietor  of  a  circus  at 
Coketown,  who  was  never  sober  and 
never  drunk,  but  always  ^  kind- 
hearted.  His  daughter  Josephine  is  a 
notable  performer  in  his  circus. 

Slender,  in  Shakespeare's  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor  (1596),  one  of  the 
suitors  of  "  sweet  Anne  Page,"  a 
country  lout  uneasily  conscious  of  his 
lack  of  ease  and  city  polish. 

He  is  a  very  potent  piece  of  imbecility. 
In  him  the  pretensions  of  the  worthy 
Gloucestershire  family  are  well  kept  up,  and 
immoralized.  He  and  his  friend  Sackerson, 
and  his  book  of  songs,  and  his  love  of  Anne 
Page  and  his  having  nothing  to  say  to  her, 
can  never  be  forgotten.  It  is  the  only  first- 
rate  character  in  the  play;  but  it  is  in  that 
class.  Shakespeare  is  the  only  writer  who 
was  as  gfreat  in  describing  weakness  as 
strength. — Hazlitt,  Characters  of  Shakc- 
spear^s  Plays. 

Slick,  Sam,  hero  of  The  Clock- 
maker:  Sayings  and  Doings  of  Samuel 


Slick  of  Slickville,  by  Judge  Thomas 
Chandler  Haliburton,  which  first 
appeared  in  a  series  of  letters  in  the 
Nova  Scotian  (1835)  and  were  gath- 
ered together  two  years  later  in  a 
volume.  Sam  reappeared  in  other 
volumes  from  the  same  pen,  and 
finally  disappeared  in  The  AttachS,  or 
Sam  Slick  in  England  (i  843-1 844), 
an  inglorious  ending  to  a  rather 
showy  beginning.  For,  despite  some 
exaggerations  of  detail,  Sam  Slick,  at 
his  first  appearance,  was  an  excellent 
caricature  of  the  typical  New  England 
pedlar  of  the  period,  especially  as  he 
set  himself, — keen-witted,  resourceful, 
cool,  calculating,  and  imperturbable, 
— in  contrast  to  the  cautious  and 
sluggish  yet  gullible  Nova  Scotians. 
With  his  knowledge  of  human  nature, 
his  mother  wit,  and  his  plentiful  use 
of  "  soft  sawder,"  Sam  is  more  than 
a  match  for  the  natives  among  whom 
he  has  come  to  peddle  clocks.  Trans- 
ferred to  England  he  loses  his  indi- 
viduality and  his  humor  degen- 
erates. 

Slop,  Dr.,  a  coarse,  choleric,  and 
self-conceited  physician  in  Sterne's 
novel.  The  Life  and  Opinions  of 
Tristram  Shandy,  Gent  (1759),  said  to 
have  been  drawn  from  one  Dr.  Bur- 
ton, a  man  midwife  of  York.  He  is 
the  inventor  of  a  pair  of  obstetrical 
forceps,  by  whose  aid  he  succeeds  in 
crushing  Tristram's  nose  in  utero  and 
smashing  Uncle  Toby's  fingers  to  a 
jelly.  Under  this  name  Cruikshank 
and  Hone  caricatured  Dr.  (afterward 
Sir  John)  Stoddart  (1773-1856),  a 
violent  anti-Bonapartist  who  was 
editor  of  the  London  Times  from 
1812  to  1816. 

Slote,  Hon.  Bardwell,  in  B.  E. 
Wolf's  comedy,  The  Mighty  Dollar,  a 
caricature  of  the  American  politician. 
A  member  of  Congress  from  the 
Cohosh  district,  he  is  ignorant,  vain, 
venal,  self-seeking,  and  unscrupulous, 
but  not  without  a  fund  of  shrewd  wit 
and  humor.  A  whimsical  peculiarity 
is  his  passion  for  indicating  a  term 
or  a  familiar  expression  by  initials,  as 
H.  O.  G.  (honorable  old  gentleman), 
P.  D.  0-  (pretty  damn  quick),  K.  K. 
(cruel  cuss),   and  G.  F.   for  jugful. 


Slowboy 


340 


Smike 


He  is  likewise  an  adept  at  mala- 
propisms:  "  My  ancestors,"  he  says, 
"  came  over  in  the  Cauliflower  and 
landed  at  Plymouth  Church." 

Slowboy,  Tilly,  in  Dickens's  Cricket 
on  the  Hearth  (1845),  the  simple- 
minded,  dull-witted,  but  devoted 
maid  of  all  work  in  the  Peerybingle 
household.  As  dry-nurse  to  baby  no 
one  could  have  been  more  affection- 
ate, but  she  had  a  surprising  talent 
for  getting  it  into  difficulties  by  hold- 
ing it  topsy-turvy  and  bringing  its 
head  into  contact  with  doors  and 
dressers,  bedposts  and  stair-rails. 

Sludge,  Dickie,  nicknamed  Flib- 
bertigibbit  in  Scott's  romance,  Ken- 
ilworfh,  the  dwarf  grandson  of  Gam- 
mer Sludge,  "  a  queer,  shambling,  ill- 
made  urchin,"  of  acute  but  knavish 
intelligence,  who  led  Edmund  Tres- 
silian  to  Wayland  Smith's  forge.  In 
the  great  pageant  at  Kenilworth 
Castle,  Dickie  assumed  the  part  of 
the  imp  Flibbertigibbit,  in  whose 
memory  he  had  been  nicknamed. 

Sludge,  Mr.,  hero  of  a  monologue 
in  verse,  Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium,  in 
Robert  Browning's  Dramatis  Per- 
soncB.  Mr.  Sludge,  a  shrewd,  plausi- 
ble Yankee  spiritualist  (evidently 
drawn  after  David  D.  Home),  is  at 
some  pains  to  vindicate  his  character 
and  career.  He  grants  that  he  is  an 
impostor,  but  he  claims  that  he  is 
merely  catering  to  a  harmless  popular 
appetite  for  deception.  Clamorous 
for  any  news  from  the  invisible  world, 
the  eager  "  circle  "  betrays  the  im- 
aginative medium  into  reporting  what 
it  appears  most  to^  desire.  Their 
superstition  feeds  his  own.  He  is 
obliged  to  cheat  in  self-defence.  And 
when  a  man  tasks  his  wits  success- 
fully, if  it  be  only  to  mislead  the  wit- 
less, he  takes  an  artist's  pride  in  the 
effort. 

Slum,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  The  Old 
Curiosity  Shop  (1840),  a  writer  of 
poetical  advertisements.  "  Ask  the 
performers,"  says  he,  "  ask  the  black- 
ing-makers, ask  the  hatters,  ask  the 
old  lottery-office  keepers,  ask  any 
man  among  'em  what  poetry  has  done 
for  him,  and,  mark  my  words,  he 
blesses  the  name  of  Sliun." 


Slumkey,  Samuel,  in  Dickens's 
Pickwick  Papers,  the  "  blue  "  can- 
didate for  Eatanswill  in  parliament, 
as  Horatio  Fitzkin  is  the  buff. 

Sly,  Christopher,  a  tinker  and  bear- 
leader, who,  in  the  induction  to  The 
Taming  of  the  Shrew,  is  found  dnmk 
by  a  nobleman  and  taken  to  his  house. 
When  he  awakes  he  is  made  to  believe 
that  he  himself  is  the  lord  of  the 
manor,  for  whose  entertainment  the 
comedy  is  then  performed.  See 
Abou  Hassan. 

Smectymnuus,  feigned  author  of  a 
tract  against  Episcopacy  and  in 
answer  to  Bishop  Hall,  which  was 
published  in  1641.  The  name  is  a 
sort  of  acrostic  made  up  from  the 
initials  of  the  real  writers,  five  Pres- 
byterian divines, — Stephen  Marshall, 
Edmund  Calamy,  Thomas  Yoimg, 
Matthew  Newcomen,  and  William 
Spurstow.  In  1642  Milton  published 
An  Apology  for  Smectymnuus. 

Smelfungus,  in  Sterne's  Sentimental 
Journey  (1768),  is  evidently  a  cari- 
cature of  Tobias  Smollett,  whose 
Travels  through  France  and  Italy  is 
one  prolonged  snarl,  and  therefore 
the  exact  antithesis  to  Sterne's  book. 
**  The  learned  Smelfimgus,"  he  says, 
"  travelled  from  Boulogne  to  Paris, 
from  Paris  to  Rome,  and  so  on;  but 
he  set  out  with  the  spleen  and  the 
jaundice,  and  every  object  he  passed 
by  was  decoloured  and  distorted.  He 
thought  he  wrote  an  account  of  them, 
but  it  was  nothing  but  an  account  of 
his  miserable  feelings."  Sterne  tells 
of  meeting  Smelfungus  at  Rome  and 
at  Turin,  and  finding  him  full  of  com- 
plaints and  prejudices.  As  his  visit 
to  Italy  was  made  in  1764,  when 
Smollett  was  also  tliere,  these  may  be 
records  of  actual  meetings. 

Smike,  in  Dickens's  Nicholas 
Nicklehy,  a  half-witted,  half-starved 
boy,  on  whom  the  hero  takes  com- 
passion when  he  is  assistant  tutor  at 
Dotheboy's  Hall.  Smike  runs  away 
to  join  him  when  he  leaves  the  Hall, 
and  Nicholas  takes  care  of  him  until 
his  death.  Smike  turns  out  to  be  the 
son  of  Ralph  NicMeby  by  an  unac- 
knowledged marriage. 


Snagsby 


341 


Snowe 


There  is  no  real  life  in  Smike.  His  misery, 
his  idiocy,  his  devotion  to  Nicholas,  his  love 
for  Kate,  are  all  overdone  and  Incompatible 
with  each  other.  But  still  the  reader  sheds 
a  tear.  Every  reader  can  find  a  tear  for 
Smike. — Anthony  Trollope. 

Snagsby,  Mr.,  In  Dickens's  Bleak 
House,  the  law  stationer  in  Cook's 
Court,  a  mild,  bald,  timid,  imassum- 
ing  man,  living  in  awe  of  a  termagant 
wife,  whom  with  unconscious  satire 
he  calls  "  his  little  woman."  He 
usually  prefaces  his  remarks  with 
"  Not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  upon  it." 

Snake,  Mr.,  in  Sheridan's  School 
for  Scandal,  a  treacherous  ally  of  Lady 
Sneerwell,  who  brazenly  confesses  to 
her,  "  you  paid  me  extremely  liberally 
for  propagating  the  lie,  but  unfortu- 
nately I  have 'been  offered  double  to 
speak  the  truth." 

Sneak,  Jerry,  in  Foote's  comedy, 
The  Mayor  of  Garratt  (1763),  a  paltry, 
mean-spirited  pin-maker,  who  be- 
comes the  eponymic  mayor.  His 
wife  is  a  domestic  tartar,  who  keeps 
Jerry  so  thoroughly  crushed  under 
her  thimab  that  he  has  become  the 
type  of  the  henpecked  husband  in 
stage-land.  Garratt  is  a  village  be- 
tween Wandsworth  and  Tooling  in 
England.  In  1750  the  inhabitants 
made  common  cause  against  any 
further  encroachment  on  their  com- 
mon. The  chairman  of  the  meeting 
was  facetiously  dubbed  the  Mayor. 
It  happened  to  begeneral  election  day, 
so  thereafter  every  election  day  a  new 
Mayor  was  appointed.  The  London 
wits  seized  on  the  idea,  and  poured 
out  political  squibs  which  feigned  to 
be  "  addresses  "  by  "  the  Mayor  of 
Garratt." 

Sneerwell,  Lady,  in  Sheridan's 
School  for  Scandal,  a  widow,  brilliant 
and  beautiful,  but  overf  ond  of  scandal- 
mongering.  "  Wounded  myself,"  she 
says,  "  in  the  early  part  of  my  Hfe 
by  the  envenomed  tongue  of  slander, 
I  confess  I  have  since  known  no  pleas- 
ure equal  to  the  reducing  of  others  to 
the  level  of  my  own  reputation." 
(Act  i,  I.)  Mr.  Snake  says  of  her, 
**  Every  one  allows  that  Lady  Sneer- 
well can  do  more  with  a  word  or  a 
look  than  many  can  with  the  most 
labored  detail,  even  when  they  hap- 


pen to  have  a  little  truth  on  their 
side  to  support  it." 

Snodgrass,  Mr.  Augustus,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  famous  Pickwick  Club,  a 
poetically-minded  young  man. 

Snout,  Tom,  in  Shakespeare's  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,  a  tinker  who 
is  cast  for  the  part  of  Pyramus's 
father  in  the  interpolated  play,  but 
instead  plays  the  wall. 

Snowe,  Lucy,  the  autobiographic 
heroine  of  Charlotte  Bronte's  novel 
Villette  (1852),  who  in  certain  re- 
spects adumbrates  some  phases  of  the 
career  and  character  of  the  author, 
her  catastrophic  experiences  as  a 
teacher  in  a  Belgian  boarding-school; 
her  sensitiveness,  her  shyness,  her 
proud  himiility,  her  spasmodic  fits  of 
impulse,  her  passionate  emotions 
concealed  under  an  icy  exterior. 
The  very  name  "Snowe" — decided 
on  after  "  Frost  "  had  been  discarded 
and  originally  spelled  "  Snow  " — ^was 
admittedly  chosen  by  Miss  BrontS 
as  **  a  cold  name,  on  the  lucus  a  non 
lucendo  principle,  for  she  has  about 
her  an  external  coldness." 

In  an  Interesting  (unpublished)  letter  to 
her  friend  Ellen  Nussey,  which  was  sold  at 
auction  in  New  York  in  191 2,  Charlotte 
Bronte  reveals  her  consciousness  of  those 
traits  which  are  adumbrated  in  personal 
fashion  in  the  character  of  Lucy  Snowe.  "I 
will  preserve  unbroken,"  she  says,  "that 
reserve  which  alone  enables  me  to  maintain 
a  decent  character  for  judgment;  but  for 
that  I  should  long  ago  have  been  set  down 
by  all  who  know  me  as  a  Frenchified  fool. 
You  have  been  very  kind  to  me  of  late  and 
you  .  .  .  have  spared  me  those  little 
sallies  of  ridicule  which,  owing  to  my  miser- 
able and  wretched  touchiness  of  character, 
used  formerly  to  make  me  wince  as  if  I  had 
been  touched  with  a  hot  iron;  things  that 
nobody  else  cares  for  enter  into  my  mind 
and  rankle  there  like  venom  .  .  .  I'm 
an  idiot"  (September  26,  1836.) 

This  figure,  as  Mr.  Wemyss  Reid  has 
observed  with  indisputable  accuracy  of 
insight,  was  doubtless,  if  never  meant  to 
win  liking  or  made  to  find  favor  in  the 
general  reader's  eyes,  yet  none  the  less 
evidently  on  that  account  the  faithful  like- 
ness of  Charlotte  Bronte,  studied  from  the 
life  and  painted  by  her  own  hand  with  the 
sharp,  austere  precision  of  a  photograph 
rather  than  a  portrait.  But  it  is  herself 
with  the  consolation  and  support  of  her 
genius  withdrawn,  with  the  strength  of  the 
spiritual  arm  immeasurably  shortened,  the 
cunning  of  the  right  hand  comparatively 
cancelled,  and  this  it  is  that  makes  the  main 


Snug 


342 


Spanker 


undertone  and  ultimate  result  of  the  book 
somewhat  mournfuUer  even  than  the  literal 
record  of  her  mournful  and  glorious  life. — 
A.  C.  Swinburne:  A  Note  on  Charlotte 
Bronte,  p.  8i. 

Snug,  in  Shakespeare's  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,  a  joiner  who  is  cast 
for  the  part  of  a  lion  in  the  interpo- 
lated play  of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe. 
He  asks  manager  Quince  if  he  had 
the  lion's  part  writ  out,  "  for,"  says 
he,  "  I  am  slow  of  memory."  On 
being  told  that  he  could  do  it  extem- 
pore, "  for  it  is  nothing  but  roaring," 
he  consents  to  undertake  it. 

Sofronia,  a  Christian  maiden  resid- 
ing in  Jerusalem  at  the  time  of  its 
siege  by  Godfrey  de  Boulogne;  hero- 
ine of  a  much-admired  episode  in 
Tasso's  Jerusalem  Delivered,  Canto  ii. 
Here  is  how  she  and  her  lover  Olindo 
are  described: 

Sofronia  she,  Olindo  hight  the  youth, 

Both  of  one  town,  both  in  one  faith  were 
taught. 
She  fair,  he  full  of  bashfulness  and  truth, 
Loved   much,   hoped   Uttle,   and   desired 
naught; 
He  durst  not  speak,  by  suit  to  purchase  ruth. 
She  saw  not,  marked  not,  wist  not  what 
he  sought; 
Thus  loved,  thus  served  he  long  but  not 

regarded. 
Unseen,   unmarked,  unpitied,  unrewarded. 
Fairfax's  translation. 

In  this  picture  of  the  hopeless  love 
of  Olindo,  Tasso  is  thought  to  have 
had  in  mind  his  own  passion  for  the 
beautiful  Leonora  d'Este,  daughter  of 
his  patron.    But  see  Tasso. 

In  the  poem,  Aladin,  the  Mahom- 
medan  king  of  Jerusalem,  has  de- 
prived a  Christian  church  of  an 
image  of  the  Virgin,  to  set  it  up  in 
a  mosque  as  a  palladium  against  the 
Crusaders.  It  disappears  diuing  the 
night.  Aladin,  confident  that  a 
Christian  has  stolen  it,  orders  a  gen- 
eral massacre  of  his  Christian  sub- 
jects. The  catastrophe  is  averted  by 
Sofronia,  who  surrenders  herself  as 
the  culprit.  Olindo,  finding  her 
sentenced  to  the  stake,  disputes  with 
her  the  right  of  martyrdom.  He  is 
condemned  to  suffer  with  her,  and 
the  pair  are  only  saved  from  being 
burnt  alive  by  the  arrival  of  the 
famous  Amazon  Clorinda,  come  to 


offer  her  service  to  the  Saracen 
king,  her  admirer.  Sofronio,  never 
before  conscious  of  Olindo's  love, 
now  returns  it  in  full,  and  goes 
with  ^  him  from  the  stake  to  the 
marriage  altar. 

Soggarth  Aroon,  poem  by  John 
Banim  in  which  the  attachment  of 
the  Irish  peasant  to  his  priest  is 
portrayed  with  touching  simplicity. 
Soggarth  Aroon  means  Priest  dear. 

Solness,  Halvard,  in  Ibsen's  drama, 
The  Master  Builder  (1893),  an  irregu- 
larly educated  architect,  who  has 
become  a  very  successful  builder, 
though,  partly  out  of  shrewdness, 
partly  out  of  an  arrogant  humility, 
he  will  not  call  himself  by  the  loftier 
title.    See  Wrangel,  Hilda. 

Building-Master  Solness  is  Ibsen  himself. 
It  is  the  old  fighter  looking  back,  surveying 
his  long  working-day,  measuring  what  has 
been  gained,  and  counting  the  cost.  .  .  . 
Solness  now  finds  himself  "on  top,"  but 
filled  with  a  secret  uneasiness  and  fear  for 
his  own  greatness.  He  feels  he  must  sum- 
mon all  his  Titanic  power  and  will  to 
"overdo  himself,"  that  he  may  keep  the 
proud  position  he  has  attained,  and  not  lose 
ground  to  the  younger  generation. — The 
Copenhagen  Tilskueren. 

Sorrel,  Hetty,  in  George  Eliot's 
novel,  Adam  Bede,  the  pretty  village ' 
girl,  vain,  empty-headed,  weak,  en- 
gaged to  Adam  Bede,  but  seduced  by 
Arthur  Donnithorne,  who  reaches 
her  with  a  reprieve  as  she  is  on  the 
point  of  paying  the  penalty  for  child 
murder. 

Of  all  George  Eliot's  female  figures  she  is 
the  least  ambitious,  and,  on  the  whole,  »I 
think,  the  most  successful.  The  part  of  the 
story  which  concerns  her  is  much  the  most 
forcible;  and  there  is  something  infinitely 
tragic  in  the  reader's  sense  of  the  contrast 
between  the  sternly  prosaic  life  of  the  good 
people  about  her,  their  wholesome  decency, 
and  their  noon-day  probity,  and  the  dusky 
sylvan  path  along  which  poor  Hetty  is  trip- 
ping, light-footed,  to  her  ruin.  Hetty's 
conduct  throughout  seems  to  me  to  be 
eminently  consistent.  The  author  has  es- 
caped the  easy  error  of  representing  her  as 
in  any  degree  made  serious  by  suffering. 
She  is  vain  and  superficial  by  nature,  and 
she  remains  so  to  the  end. — Henry  James: 
Views  and  Reviews, 

Spanker,  Lady  Gay,  in  Dion  Bouci- 
cault's  comedy,  London  Assurance 
(1841),  a  gay  and  brilliant  woman, 
devoted  to  horses  and  hunting,  who 


Sparabella 


343 


Sprague 


keeps  a  whip  hand  over  her  meek 
little  husband,  Dolly  Spanker. 

Sparabella,  in  Gay's  Pastorals,  iii 
(1714),  a  shepherdess  in  love  with 
D'Arfey,  who  prefers  the  ungainly 
Clumsilis,  whereupon  Sparabella  re- 
solves on  suicide.  But  how?  She 
discards  one  plan  after  another.  A 
penknife  is  too  suggestive  of  a  squeak- 
ing pig;  hanging,  of  a  dog;  drowning, 
of  a  scolding  quean.  So  the  sun  goes 
down  upon  her  wrath  and 

The  prudent  maiden  deemed  it  then  too 

late. 
And  till  to-morrow  came  deferred  her  fate. 

Sparkish,  in  Wycherley's  Country 
Wife  (1675),  and  Garrick's  adapta- 
tion of  the  same,  The  Country  Girl 
(1766),  a  self -imagined  prince  of  cox- 
combs and  a  pretender  to  wit  and 
letters,  without  common  sense  or 
common  tinderstanding.  Congreve 
took  him  as  the  model  for  his  Tattle 
in  Love  for  Love  (1695). 

Sparrowgrass,  Samson,  pretended 
author  of  the  Sparrowgrass  Papers 
(1856),  by  Frederick  S.  Cozzens,  who 
autobiographically  describes  the  haps 
and  mishaps  of  a  young  city-bred 
couple  who  set  up  housekeeping  in 
Yonkers,  N.  Y.,  at  that  time  a  mere 
suburban  village. 

Spatterdash,  Simon,  in  Samuel 
Beazley's  farce,  The  Boarding-House 
(181 1),  a  local  mihtiaman,  who  in- 
dulges freely  in  whimsical  compari- 
sons that  may  have  suggested  one 
of  Sam  Weller's  many  accomplish- 
ments,— e.g.,  "  *  Come  on,'  as  the 
man  said  to  his  tight  boot,"  "  '  I 
know  the  world,'  as  the  monkey  said 
when  he  cut  ofiE  his  tail,"  "  *  I'm 
turned  soger,'  as  the  lobster  said 
when  he  popped  his  head  out  of  the 
boiler,"  "  'I'm  down  upon  you,'  as 
the  extinguisher  said  to  the  rush- 
light."    See  Weller,  Samuel. 

Spenlow,  Dora,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield,  the  "  child- wife  "  of  the 
hero,  who  rather  providentially  dies 
when  her  childishness  palls  upon 
him.  As  a  girl  she  had  acqtdred  in 
Paris  some  graces,  but  she  has  neither 
intellect  nor  education.  Her  confi- 
dante is  Julia  Mills,  a  sentimental 


maiden.  Jip,  a  spaniel,  is  her  closest 
companion.  Mr.  Spenlow  pooh- 
poohs  the  whole  business  of  her  mar- 
riage, but  he  opporttmely  dies,  a 
victim,  apparently,  of  comfortable 
living  and  uncomfortable  neckcloths. 
Dora  falls  into  the  hands  of  two 
spinster  aunts,  who  enjoy  the  engage- 
ment very  much,  and  make  a  pet  of 
it,  until  David  has  attained  a  suffi- 
ciency by  reporting  and  other  various 
labor.  Romance  now  turns  into 
domestic  farce.  There  is  some  baby 
house-keeping, — the  silliness  of  the 
child-wife  being  relieved  by  touches 
of  real  htmior  and  pathos, — and  in  a 
year  or  two  Dora  dies  and  clears  the 
way  for  Agnes  Wickfield. 

Copperfield's  first  meeting  with  Dora  is 
Dickens's  meeting  (when  little  more  than  a 
boy)  with  a  lady  by  no  means  so  young  as 
Dora  is  there  represented.  The  courtship 
is  derived  from  his  youthful  love  for  the 
original  of  Flora.  The  married  life  with 
Dora,  so  far  as  her  household  ways  are  con- 
cerned, presents  Dickens's  own  experience, 
so  that  Dora  there  represents  a  third  person, 
and  that  person  his  wife.  And,  lastly,  the 
death  of  Dota  and  Copperfield's  sorrow 
during  the  following  years  are  drawn  from 
the  death  of  his  wife's  younger  sister  Mary, 
and  the  sorrow  Dickens  felt  for  years  there- 
after.— Richard  A.  Proctor:  Knowledge, 
vol.  vii,  p.  537. 

Spenlow,  Francis,  in  David  Cop- 
perfield (1849),  a  proctor  to  whom 
David  was  articled  and  father  of 
Dora,  whom  David  subsequently 
married.  When  he  is  accidentally 
killed  in  a  carriage  accident,  Dora 
goes  to  live  with  his  maiden  sisters. 
Misses  Lavinia  and  Clarissa  Spenlow. 

They  were  not  unlike  birds  altogether, 
having  a  sharp,  brisk,  sudden  manner,  and 
a  little,  short,  spruce  way  of  adjusting  them- 
selves, like  canaries. — Chap.  xi. 

Sprague,  Scientific,  hero  of  a  series 
of  short  stories  by  Francis  Lynde, 
bound  together  imder  that  general 
title.  He  owes  the  nickname  to  the 
fact  that  he  utilizes  in  business  the 
habit  of  acute  observation  and  of 
imaginative  deduction  therefrom 
which  he  has  acquired  in  the  study 
of  natural  science.  All  the  stories 
are  incidents  in  a  long  struggle  for 
the  retention  of  a  single  railroad  in 
the  hands  of  its  rightful  owners,  and 


Squeers 


344 


Stareleigh 


Scientific  Sprague  is  enabled  to  con- 
found all  the  knavish  tricks  of  the 
financial  pirates  who  set  out  to 
plunder  it. 

Squeers,  Wackford,  in  Dickens's 
Nicholas  Nickleby  (1838),  owner  of 
Dotheboys  Hall,  in  Yorkshire,  a 
rapacious,  ignorant,  and  brutal 
schoolmaster.  Nicholas  engages  him- 
self as  a  scholastic  assistant  to  this 
gentleman,  but  disapproves  of  his 
methods,  vigorously  interferes  when 
he  attempts  to  thrash  Smike,  and 
leaves,  foUowed  by  Smike,  the  worst- 
treated  of  all  the  pupils.  Squeers 
had  only  one  eye.  The  blank  side  of 
his  face  was  much  puckered  up,  which 
gave  him  a  sinister  appearance,  espe- 
cially when  he  smiled,  at  which  times 
his  expression  bordered  on  the  villain- 
ous. He  wore  a  white  neckerchief 
with  long  ends,  and  a  scholastic  suit 
of  black;  but,  his  coat-sleeves  being 
a  great  deal  too  long,  and  his  trousers 
a  great  deal  too  short,  he  appeared 
ill  at  ease  in  his  clothes,  and  as  if  he 
were  in  a  perpetual  state  of  astonish- 
ment at  finding  himself  so  respectable. 
His  daughter  Fanny  Squeers  is  a  gro- 
tesquely peevish  and  repulsive  young 
woman. 

Squintum,  Dr.,  in  Foote's  farce, 
The  Minor,  a  character  introduced 
to  burlesque  George  Whitfield,  the 
Methodist  preacher,  who  had  a  cast 
in  his  eye.  Theodore  Hook  applied 
the  nickname  to  the  Rev.  Edward 
Irving,  who  was  similarly  afflicted. 

Squire  of  Dames,  in  Spenser's 
Faerie  Queene,  a  young  knight  in  love 
with  Coltmibell,  who  sets  him  a  diffi- 
cult task  ere  she  will  yield  her  hand. 
He  must  travel  for  a  twelvemonth, 
rescuing  distressed  damsels,  and 
return  to  her  with  pledges  of  his 
exploits.  At  the  appointed  time  he 
hands  her  300  pledges,  but  she  now 
tells  him  to  take  a  second  journey 
and  not  return  to  her  imtil  he  could 
bring  her  pledges  from  300  virgins 
that  they  would  dwell  in  chastity  all 
their  lives.  Alas!  in  three  years' 
travel  he  finds  only  three  virgins 
willing  to  take  the  pledge.  One  was 
a  mm,  one  a  satiated  courtesan,  the 
last  a  rustic  cottager  who  alone  was 


influenced  by  any  "  principle  of 
virtue."  The  story  is  imitated  from 
The  Host's  Tale  in  Orlando  Furioso, 
xxviii. 

Stackpole,  Henrietta,  in  Henry 
James's  novel.  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady 
(1882),  the  friend  of  Isabel  Archer 
and  European  correspondent  for  an 
American  paper.  She  is  sincere, 
democratic,  and  loyal  to  her  national 
traditions. 

Stalky,  Your  Uncle,  in  Rudyard 
Kipling's  Stalky  and  Co.,  nickname 
for  Arthur  L.  Corkran,  who  with  two 
other  boys  affects  an  aloofness  from 
the  rest  of  the  school,  playing  tricks 
upon  masters  and  pupils  alike.  He 
is  a  clever  boy,  mathematically  in- 
clined, resourceful,  self-reliant,  with 
a  good  conceit  of  himself.  McTurk, 
heir  to  an  Irish  estate,  is  the  gentle- 
man of  the  company.  Beetle,  who 
occasionally  sacrifices  his  own  com- 
fort to  assist  Stalky  in  his  plots,  is 
accepted  as  a  self  portrait  of  Kipling 
in  boyhood.  The  likeness  is  empha- 
sized by  the  fact  that,  his  choice  of 
career  being  limited  by  his  spectacles, 
he  goes  out  to  India  as  a  journalist. 

Standish,  Miles,  the  bliiff  Puritan 
captain  (i  584-1656),  who  plays  a 
leading  part  in  Longfellow's  narrative 
poem  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish 
(1858).  Not  knowing  that  John 
Alden,  his  clerk  and  nearest  friend, 
is  like  himself  in  love  with  Priscilla 
Mullen,  he  bids  the  lad  woo  the 
maiden  as  his  proxy  in  such  manner 
as  youth  only  knows  how  to  assume. 
John,  with  much  misgiving,  accepts 
the  mission,  but  the  maiden  guesses 
his  secret,  and  archly  asks  him,  "  Why 
don't  you  speak  for  yourself,  John?  " 
Standish  flies  into  a  rage  when  he 
hears  the  story.  Soon  after,  he  dis- 
appears and  is  reported  to  have  been 
slain  by  the  Indians.  John  then 
deems  he  is  justified  in  speaking  for 
himself.  Standish  turns  up  at  the 
wedding,  for  he  had  been  wounded, 
not  slain,  and  good-himioredly  ac- 
cepts the  situation. 

Stareleigh,  Justice,  in  Dickens's 
Pickwick  Papers,  a  fat,  stodgy^  little 
judge,  deaf  and  irascible,  who  in  the 
absence  of  the  Chief  Justice  sat  in 


Starr 


345 


Stella 


judgment  at  the  trial  of  Bardell  v, 
Pickwick. 

Starr,  David,  hero  of  Bayard 
Taylor's  tragedy  of  The  Prophet 
(1874),  is  to  some  extent  a  poetical 
reminiscence  of  Joseph  Smith,  the 
foimder  of  Mormonism.  Starr  is  the 
only  son  of  a  hard-headed  farmer, 
who  scoffs  at  his  pretensions,  and  of  a 
wife,  long  barren,  who  when  David 
came  looked  upon  him  as  peculiarly 
from  the  Lord,  yet  never,  despite  all 
her  pride  and  tenderness,  gave  him 
implicit  belief.  This  comes  only  from 
the  girl  he  marries.  It  is  her  loving 
faith,  joined  to  the  inspiring  credulity 
of  his  neighbors,  that  works  upon 
David  till  he  feels  himself  a  prophet 
indeed. 

The  Prophet  begins  by  painfully  doubting 
the  inspiration  which  he  is  passionately 
eager  to  claim.  The  craft  of  a  man  of  the 
world  who  sees  how  the  prophetic  authority 
may  be  made  to  serve  his  selfish  purposes 
persuades  him  that  his  doubts  have  been 
resolved  by  miracle;  he  goes  on  from  purely 
intellectual  to  moral  delusions,  becomes  an 
instrument  in  the  hands  of  his  undoer,  and 
realizes  his  own  imposture  just  as  death 
deprives  him  of  the  power  to  retract  his 
pretensions. 

Staunton,  George,  In  Scott's  novel 
The  Heart  of  Midlothian,  the  prodigal 
son  of  the  rector  of  WiUingham  and 
the  seducer  of  Effie  Deans.  He  ap- 
pears under  various  aliases,  first  as 
Geordie  Robertson,  a  felon,  then  in 
female  disguise  as  the  Madge  Wildfire 
of  the  Porteous  riots;  lastly  he  comes 
into  a  baronetage  and  marries  Effie. 
Sir  George  and  Lady  Staimton  reach 
a  prominent  station  in  London 
society.  He  is  killed  by  a  gipsy  boy 
known  as  "  The  Whistler,"  who 
proves  to  be  his  own  and  Effie's  son, 
the  illegitimate  issue  of  the  seduction. 

The  lover  of  EflBe  Deans  is  far  too  melo- 
dramatic, too  "Satanic."  For  once,  in  his 
failure  of  a  character,  Scott  was  imitating 
Byron's  heroes,  whether  he  knew  it  or  not, 
as  Byron  imitated  figures  like  the  Schedoni 
of  Mrs.  RadclifEe. — Andrew  Lang:  Sir 
Walter  Scott. 

Steerforth,  James,  in  Dickens's 
David  Copperfield,  an  intimate  friend 
of  the  hero,  who  worships  him  with 
the  enthusiasm  of  trustful  and  un- 
spoiled youth.    Despite  his  engaging 


manners,  his  captivating  ways,  his 
personal  magnetism,  Steerforth  is 
thoroughly  bad, — hard,  cruel,  selfish, 
domineering.  Introduced  to  the 
Peggotty  household,  he  deliberately 
seduces  Ham's  cousin  and  betrothed 
wife,  Little  Emily.  On  the  eve  of  her 
intended  marriage  she  elopes  with 
him  to  the  Continent,  but  he  wearies 
of  her  and  deserts  her.  He  perishes 
in  the  shipwreck  described  in  Chap.  Iv. 

Steerforth,  Mrs.,  James's  mother 
(see  supra),  an  elderly  lady,  hand- 
some and  haughty,  entirely  devoted 
to  her  son  until  the  inevitable  clash 
comes  between  these  two  imperious 
natures. 

SteUa  (Lat.  for  "  Star  "),  the  name 
under  which  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  in 
Astrophel  and  Stella,  a  series  of  son- 
nets, celebrated  his  only  love,  the 
Lady  Penelppe  Devereux.  She  was  a 
maid  when  he  first  met  her  and  a 
widow  before  he  died,  but  these 
sonnets  were  addressed  to  her  during 
the  period  of  her  married  life  with 
Lord  Rich. 

Stella,  a  poetical  name  given  by 
Swift  to  Miss  Esther  Johnson.  She 
is  thought  to  have  been  a  natural 
daughter  of  Sir  William  Temple  by 
his  housekeeper,  Mrs.  Johnson,  and 
it  was  when  forming  a  part  of  Sir 
William's  household  (1688-1694)  that 
Swift  met  her.  That  she  inspired  in 
him  a  warm  affection  is  evident  by 
the  tone  of  his  Journal  to  Stella,  a 
collection  of  the  letters  he  wrote  to 
her  from  London  when  he  was  a 
famous  man  there.  But,  for  some 
reason,  which  has  never  been  satis- 
factorily explained,  he  put  off  marry- 
ing her  till  171 6,  and  then  only  went 
through  the  forms  of  a  ceremony 
which  was  never  acknowledged  and 
lived  apart  from  her  imtil  her  death 
in  1728. 

Who  hasn't  In  his  mind  an  Image  of 
Stella?  Who  does  not  love  her?  Fair  and 
tender  creature:  pure  and  affectionate 
heart!  Boots  it  to  you,  now  that  you  have 
been  at  rest  for  a  hundred  and  twenty  years, 
not  divided  in  death  from  the  cold  heart 
which  caused  yours,  whilst  it  beat,  such 
faithful  pangs  of  love  and  grief — boots  it  to 
you  now,  that  the  whole  world  loves  and 
deplores  you?  Scarce  any  man,  I  believe, 
ever  thought  of  that  grave,  that  did  not 


Stenio 


346 


Strap 


cast  a  flower  of  pity  on  it,  and  write  over 
it  a  sweet  epitaph.  Gentle  lady,  so  lovely, 
so  loving,  so  unhappy!  you  have  had  count- 
less champions;  milUons  of  manly  hearts 
mourning  for  you.  From  generation  to 
generation  we  take  up  the  fond  tradition 
of  your  beauty:  we  watch  and  follow  your 
tragedy,  your  bright  morning  love  and 
purity,  your  constancy,  your  grief,  your 
sweet  martyrdom.  We  know  your  legend  by 
heart.  You  are  one  of  the  saints  of  English 
story. — Thackeray:    English  Humorists. 

Stenio,  in  George  Sand's  romance, 
Lelia  (1833),  a  young  poet,  passion- 
ate, romantic,  a  dreamer  of  dreams, 
who  falls  in  love  with  the  titular 
heroine.  L^lia,  once  deceived,  has 
lost  all  faith  in  men,  all  desire  for 
love.  Her  sister  Pulch^rie,  a  courte- 
san, has  never  known  love,  but  only- 
lust.  One  represents  soul  without 
body,  the  other  body  without  soul. 
Stenio  is  intoxicated  with  the  idea 
that  he  has  conquered  L^lia's  cold- 
ness, but  wakes  to  find  that,  in  hideous 
irony,  she  has  thrust  him  into  the 
arms  of  her  sister,  who  in  person 
exactly  resembles  her.  He  falls  to 
the  level  of  the  lowest  debauchee  and, 
having  ruined  body  and  soul,  makes 
away  with  himself. 

Steno,  Michel,  in  Byron's  tragedy, 
Marino  Faliero,  the  Doge  of  Venice. 
See  Faliero. 

Steyne,  Marquis  of,  in  Thackeray's 
Vanity  Fair,  the  profligate,  cynical, 
witty,  and  wicked  old  nobleman  who 
comes  between  Becky  Sharp  and  her 
husband,  Rawdon  Crawley,  and  is 
soundly  thrashed  by  the  latter. 
Although  it  is  generally  agreed  that 
he  was  drawn  from  a  marquis  of 
Hertford,  opinions  differ  as  to  whether 
it  was  the  second  or  the  third  marquis 
who  furnished  the  model.  The  ad- 
herents of  both  candidates  for  that 
bad  eminence  make  so  excellent  a 
case  as  to  force  the  conclusion  that 
Thackeray  took  hints  from  both: 
from  the  elder, — whom  Moore  called 
"  the  hoary  old  sinner,"  in  his  Two- 
penny Post-Bag,  whose  seduction  of 
Mrs.  Massey  was  a  pubhc  scandal, 
and  who  complaisantly  tolerated  his 
own  wife's  liaison  with  George  IV, — 
and  also  from  the  younger,  the  less 
notorious  but  almost  equally  profli- 
gate back  of  the  Regency.    A  wood- 


cut portrait  of  Lord  Steyne  which 
was  contained  in  the  first  issue  of 
Vanity  Fair,  but  immediately  sup- 
pressed, bears  a  remarkable  likeness 
to  Sir  Thomas  Laurence's  portrait  of 
this  third  marquis. 

Stirling,  Peter,  hero  of  a  political 
novel,  The  Honorable  Peter  Sterling 
(1895),  by  Paul  Leicester  Ford, 
tracing  the  career  of  the  better  sort 
of  American  "  boss."  Grover  Cleve- 
land has  been  suggested  as  a  possible 
prototype. 

The  Honorable  Peter  Stirling  is  not  a 
typical  boss.  Judged  by  the  knowledge  of 
the  genus  derived  from  its  works,  his  char- 
acter is  far  more  ideal  than  real,  but  it  is 
so  strongly  imagined  and  logically  drawn 
that  it  satisfies  the  demand  for  the  appear- 
ance of  truth  in  art.  .  .  .  The  inference 
from  his  character  and  career  is  not  that  a 
boss  is  a  vital  necessity,  but  that  he  is  more 
than  an  accident  in  a  great  democracy,  and 
that,  given  a  few  Stirlings  to  compete 
against  many  Maguires,  the  name  boss  and 
the  thing  might  lose  an  opprobrious  sig- 
nificance.— N.  Y.  Nation. 

Storm,  John,  called  by  his  parishion- 
ers in  London  "Father  Storm,"  hero 
of  Hall  Caine's  novel,  The  Christian 
(1897),  who  on  his  deathbed  marries 
Glory  Quayle. 

Strafford,  Thomas  Wentworth,  Earl 
of  (1837),  is  the  hero  of  Browning's 
drama,  Strafford.  Its  main  interest 
is  centered  in  the  character  of  Straf- 
ford and  his  relation  to  the  king,  and 
the  poet  has  displayed  a  peculiar 
sympathy  for  this  proud,  sensitive, 
and  impatient  man,  who  recoiled 
from  every  proof  of  his  master's 
treachery  to  himself,  and  yet  antici- 
pated its  worst  results  in  a  scarcely 
interrupted  flow  of  tender,  self- 
sacrificing  pity. 

Strap,  Hugh,  in  Smollett's  Roderick 
Random  (1748),  a  loyal,  simple- 
minded,  and  disinterested  friend  and 
adherent  of  the  graceless  hero. 

We  believe  there  are  few  readers  who 
are  not  disgusted  with  the  miserable  reward 
assigned  to  Strap  in  the  closing  chapter  of 
the  novel.  Five  hundred  pounds  (scarce 
the  value  of  the  goods  he  had  presented  to 
his  master)  and  the  hand  of  a  reclaimed 
street-walker,  even  when  added  to  a  High- 
land farm,  seem  but  a  poor  recompense  for 
his  faithful  and  disinterested  attachment." 
—Sir  W.  Scott. 


Strephon 


347 


Stuyvesant 


The  Monthly  Magazine  of  May,  1809, 
records  the  death,  at  the  Lodge,  Villiers 
Walk,  Adelphi,  of  Mr.  Hugh  Hewson,  at 
the  age  of  eighty-five,  and  states  that  he 
was  "the  identical  Hugh  Strap  whom  Dr. 
Smollett  has  rendered  so  conspicuously 
interesting."  etc.  Hewson  for  over  forty 
years  had  kept  a  hair-dresser's  shop  in  the 
parish  of  St.  Martin's  in  the  Fields.  The 
writer  of  the  notice  says,  "We  understand 
the  deceased  left  behind  him  an  interlined 
copy  of  Roderick  Random,  with  comments 
on  some  of  the  passages.  According  to 
Nicholls,  Literary  Anecdotes,  iii,  465,  the 
original  of  this  character  was  supposed  to 
be  Lewis,  a  book-binder  of  Chelsea. — Notes 
and  Queries,  July  9,  1910. 

Strephon,  in  Sir  Philip  Sidney's 
Arcadia  (1580),  a  shepherd  who 
makes  love  to  Urania.  Since  Sidney's 
time  it  has  become  a  conventional 
name  for  a  lover,  Chloe  being  the 
name  of  the  lady  in  apposition. 

Strong,  Dr.,  in  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield  (1849),  master  of  the 
school  at  Canterbury  to  which  David 
is  sent  by  his  aimt.  He  is  an  amiable, 
benevolent,  and  kindly  sort  of  Casau- 
bon  (q.v.),  and  may  have  suggested 
that  character  to  George  Eliot,  for 
he  is  engaged  on  the  compilation  of 
a  monumental  dictionary,  which 
might  be  completed  "  in  one  thousand 
six  himdred  and  forty-nine  years, 
counting  from  the  doctor's  last,  or 
sixty-second,  birthday."  He  has  a 
young  wife,  Annie,  who  is  devoted  to 
him.  Her  scapegrace  cousin,  Jack 
Maldon,  whom  the  doctor  has  sup- 
ported for  years,  joins  with  others  in 
an  imsuccessful  attempt  to  sow  dis- 
sension between  the  pair. 

Struldbugs,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's 
Travels,  a  race  of  beings  inhabiting 
Luggnagg  who  are  gifted  with  immor- 
tality, but  not  with  youth,  and  find 
a  terrible  fate  in  old  age  and  decay. 
See  TiTHONus  in  vol.  11. 

Strutt,  Lord,  in  Arbuthnot's  His- 
tory of  John  Bull,  (1712),  a  caricature 
of  the  King  of  Spain  and  inferentially 
of  the  Spanish  people.  The  particular 
king  aimed  at  is  Charles  H,  who, 
dying  without  issue,  left  his  kingdom 
to  Philippe  due  d 'Anson,  here  called 
Philip  Lord  Strutt. 

Stryver,  C.  J.  (familiarly  known  as 
Bully  Strjrver),  in  Dickens's  Tale  of 
Two  Cities,  counsel  for  Charles  Dar- 
nay  in  his  trial  for  treason. 


He  was  stout,  loud,  red,  bluff,  and  free 
from  any  drawback  of  delicacy;  had  a  push- 
ing way  of  shouldering  himself  (morally 
and  physically)  into  companies  and  con- 
versations, that  argued  well  for  his  shoulder- 
ing his  way  on  in  life. — Book  ii,  Chap.  24. 

Stuffy,  Matthew,  in  Charles  Mat- 
thews's  farce  At  Home  (18 18),  an 
amateur  actor,  loud  in  comic  eulogy 
of  "  the  immortal  Garrick  "  and  his 
times.  He  appHes  to  VeUinspeck,  a 
country  manager,  for  a  position  as 
prompter,  being  especially  fitted 
therefore  by  a  cast  in  his  eye  which 
enables  him  to  keep  one  eye  on  the 
actor  and  another  on  his  book. 

Sttikeley,  Captain,  in  an  anony- 
mous historical  tragedy,  The  Battle 
of  Alcazar,  with  the  Death  of  Captain 
Stukeley  (1594),  a  marquis  of  Ireland. 
Forced  by  stress  of  weather  to  land 
in  Portugal,  he  finds  that  King 
Sebastian  had  espoused  the  cause  of 
the  exiled  Muly  Mahomet,  King  of 
Barbary,  against  the  latter's  uncle, 
Abdiknec,  who  has  dethroned  him. 
He  joins  his  forces  to  those  of  Sebas- 
tian. The  battle  of  Alcazar  follows. 
Both  the  Moorish  Kings  are  slain 
outright,  and  Stukeley  dies  later  of 
his  wounds. 

Stukely,  in  Edward  Moore's  do- 
mestic tragedy.  The  Gamester  (1753), 
an  unconscionable  villain  and  un- 
blushing hypocrite,  who,  with  the 
aid  of  loaded  dice  and  an  oily  tongue, 
lures  Beverley  on  to  his  ruin  at  the 
gaming  table,  and  who  imposes  on 
his  unsuspecting  wife  as  a  friend  of 
the  family  imtil  he  makes  an  attack 
upon  her  honor. 

Stuyvesant,  Peter  (i 592-1672),  the 
last  Dutch  governor  of  New  York. 
He  was  appointed  in  1646  and  took 
his  seat  next  year;  conciliated  the 
Indians;  arranged  a  boundary  line 
with  the  English  colonists  of  Connect- 
icut (1650);  dismissed  a  convention 
demanding  popular  reforms  (1653); 
surrendered  to  the  English  Septem- 
ber, 1664);  and,  after  a  short  sojourn 
in  the  Netherlands,  returned  and 
lived  on  his  farm,  the  Bowerii  (Bow- 
ery), in  New  York,  imtil  his  death. 
Washington  Irving  makes  delightful 
fim  of  him  in  Knickerbocker's  History 
of  New   York  (1809). 


Subtle 


348 


Susan 


Subtle,  the  titular  alchemist  in 
Ben  Jonson's  comedy,  The  Alchemist 
(1610),  a  wily  charlatan,  who  dupes 
Sir  Epicm-e  Mammon  and  others 
into  the  belief  that  he  has  discovered 
the  secret  of  the  philosopher's  stone. 
Dryden  accused  Jonson  of  having 
taken  Tomkis's  comedy  of  Albumazar 
(q.v.)  as  the  "  best  model  "  of  The 
Alchemist. 

Subtle  was  got  by  our  Albumazer, 
That  Alchemist  by  this  Astrolog. 
Prologue  for  revival  of  Albumazar. 

Summerson,  Esther,  the  heroine 
of  Dickens's  Bleak  House,  an  orphan 
niece  of  Miss  Barbery,  and  the  narra- 
tor of  parts  of  the  story,  not  entirely 
unconscious  of  the  facts  that  she  is 
wise,  prudent,  pretty,  and  sweet- 
tempered,  a  notable  housewife,  a 
self-denying  friend,  and  a  universal 
favorite.  She  proves  to  be  an  illegiti- 
mate daughter  of  Lady  Dedlock  and 
Captain  Hawdon.  Mr.  Guppy  falls 
in  love  with  her,  proposes,  and  is 
rejected.  When  she  loses  some  of  her 
good  looks  by  smallpox,  he  is  terribly 
scared  lest  he  be  held  to  his  earlier 
promise.  Another  suitor  is  John 
Jamdyce,  and  a  third  Allan  Wood- 
court,  whom  she  marries.  According 
to  Doctor  Shelton  Mackenzie  (Life 
of  Dickens,  p.  203),  this  character  is 
supposed  to  have  been  drawn  from 
real  life,  and  to  have  been  intended 
as  a  portrait  of  Miss  Sophia  Iselin, 
author  of  a  volume  of  poems  pub- 
lished in  1847. 

Superman,  an  imaginary  being 
into  whom  man  may  ultimately 
develop,  according  to  Nietzsche. 

In  one  of  his  least  convincing  phrases, 
Nietzsche  had  said  that  just  as  the  ape 
ultimately  produced  the  man,  so  should  we 
ultimately  produce  something  higher  than 
the  man.  The  immediate  answer  of  course 
is  suflSciently  obvious:  the  ape  did  not 
worry  about  the  man,  so  why  should  we 
worry  about  the  superman?  If  the  super- 
man will  come  by  natural  selection,  may 
we  leave  it  to  natural  selection?  If  the 
superman  will  come  by  human  selection, 
what  sort  of  superman  are  we  to  select? 
.  .  .  This  notion  of  producing  superior 
human  beings  by  the  methods  of  the  stud- 
farm  has  often  been  urged,  though  its  diflB- 
culties  have  never  been  cleared  up,  .  .  . 
The  first  and  most  obvious  objection  to  it, 
of  course,  is  this:    that  if  you  are  to  breed 


men  as  pigs,  you  require  some  overseer 
who  is  as  much  more  subtle  than  a  man  as 
a  man  is  more  subtle  than  a  pig. — G.  K. 
Chesterton:    George  Bernard  Shaw,  p.  204. 

Supplehouse,  in  Anthony  Trol- 
lope's  Framley  Parsonage  (1861),  a 
politician  whose  ambition  runs  far 
ahead  of  his  abilities.  It  happened 
that  during  the  Crimean  War  a  por- 
tion of  the  London  press  had  extolled 
him  as  the  only  man  who  could  save 
the  country.  Ever  since  he  had  been 
going  about  swinging  his  tomahawk 
against  the  enemies  of  himself  and 
the  country.  In  return  his  country 
had  bestowed  upon  him  a  subordinate 
position.  He  is  ever  haimted  with 
the  thought,  "  How  can  a  man  bom 
to  save  a  nation  and  to  lead  a  people 
be  content  to  fill  the  chair  of  an 
under-secretary?  " 

Surface,  Charles,  a  young  rake  in 
Sheridan's  comedy  of  The  School  for 
Scandal. 

Surface,  Joseph,  in  Sheridan's 
comedy.  The  School  for  Scandal, 
brother  of  the  foregoing,  a  consum- 
mate hypocrite,  noted  for  his  "  senti- 
ments. * '  He  pretends  to  admire  Lady 
Teazle,  and  pursues  Maria  for  her 
fortune. 

If  that  gem,  the  character  of  Joseph 
Surface,  was  Murphy's,  the  splendid  and 
more  valuable  setting  was  Sheiidan's.  He 
took  Murphy's  Malvil  from  his  lurking-place 
in  the  closet,  and  "dragged  the  struggling 
monster  into  day"  upon  the  stage.  That 
is,  he  gave  interest,  life,  and  action,  or,  in 
other  words,  its  dramatic  being,  to  the 
mere  conception  and  written  specimens  of 
a  character.  This  is  the  merit  of  Sheridan's 
comedies,  that  everything  in  them  tells; 
there  is  no  labor  in  vain. — Hazutt:  Comic 
Writers. 

Surface,  Sir  Oliver,  in  Sheridan's 
comedy,  The  School  for  Scandal,  the 
uncle  of  Charles  and  Joseph  Surface. 

Susan,  heroine  of  Douglas  Jerrold's 
drama.  Black-eyed  Susan,  or  All  in 
the  Downs  (1829),  which  was  sug- 
gested by  Gay's  ballad.  Sweet  Wil- 
liam's Farewell  to  Black-eyed  Susan. 
Captain  Crosstree,  in  the  play, 
attempts  to  carry  off  Susan,  and 
William,  to  save  his  wife,  strikes  his 
superior,  is  court-martialled,  and 
condemned  to  death.  The  Captain, 
however,    acknowledges    his    fault, 


Susan 


349 


Swiveller 


and  procures  a  discharge  showing 
that  William,  when  he  struck  the 
Captain,  was  no  longer  in  the  king 's 
service. 

Susan,  Simple,  story  for  children 
in  Miss  Edgeworth's  Parent's  Assist- 
ant. 

A  most  charming  little  idyl  is  that  of 
Simple  Susan,  who  was  a  real  maiden  living 
In  the  neighborhood  of  Edgeworthstown. 
.  .  .  Few  among  us  will  not  have  shared 
Mr.  Edgeworth's  partiality  for  the  chq,rming 
little  tale.  The  children  fling  their  garlands 
and  tie  up  their  violets.  Susan  bakes  her 
cottage  loaves  and  gathers  marigolds  for 
broth,  and  tends  her  mother  to  the  distant 
tune  of  Philip's  pipe  coming  across  the 
fields.  As  we  read  the  story  again  it  seems 
as  if  we  could  almost  scent  the  fragrance 
of  the  primroses  and  the  double  violets, 
and  hear  the  music  sounding  above  the 
children's  voices,  and  the  bleatings  of  the 
lamb,  so  simply  and  delightfully  is  the 
whole  story  constructed.  Among  all  Miss 
Edgeworth's  characters  few  are  more 
familiar  to  the  world  than  that  of  Susan's 
pretty  pet  lamb. — Lady  Anne  Thackeray 
Ritchie. 

Svanhild,  heroine  of  Ibsen's  Love 
Comedy.  The  supposed  prototype  of 
Svanhild,  and  also  of  EUida  in  the 
same  author's  Lady  from  the  Sea,  was 
Camilla  Collett  (i 8 13- 1903),  author 
of  The  Prefect's  Daughters,  a  novel 
satirizing  the  conventional  ideas  on 
marriage  prevalent  in  contemporary 
Norway. 

There  is  a  story,  told  by  Ibsen 
himself,  that  once  in  Munich,  after 
an  evening  with  the  Ibsens,  she  was 
being  escorted  back  to  her  rooms  by 
the  dramatist,  when  she  stopped  him 
under  a  gaslight  and  asked  him 
point-blank,  "  Am  I  Svanhild? " 
Ibsen  parried  the  question  by  asking 
her  the  name  of  her  street  again. 
"  Don't  you  know?  "  said  Camilla, 
referring  back  to  her  question.  "  Not 
in  the  least,"  answered  Ibsen.  "  How 
ever,  the  landlady  in  the  hotel  oppo- 
site will  take  care  of  you  for  the  night 
and  help  you  in  the  morning."  And 
with  that  he  left  her. 

Svengali,  in  George  du  Maurier's 
novel  Trilby,  a  Jew  adventurer  in 
Paris,  who  finds  that  he  can  hypno- 
tize Trilby  O'Ferral  into  doing  his 
will  in  all  things,  even  to  singing 
without  knowing  a  note  of  music. 
She  becomes  a  famous  vocalist  under 


his  influence,  but  the  spell  is  broken 
when  he  dies. 

Swan,  David,  hero  of  a  "  Fantasy  " 
by  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  in  Twice- 
told  Tales  (1837). 

The  subject  is  nothing  more  or  less  than 
an  hour's  sleep  by  the  wayside  of  a  youth 
while  waiting  for  the  coach  that  is  to  carry 
him  to  Boston.  Yet  how  much  of  thought- 
ful and  reflective  beauty  is  thrown  around 
it,  what  strange  and  airy  destinies  brush  by 
the  youth's  unconscious  face,  how  much 
matter  for  deep  meditation  of  life  and  death, 
the  past  and  future,  time  and  eternity,  is 
called  forth  by  the  few  incidents  in  this 
simple  tale! — Longfellow. 

Swancourt,  Elfrida,  heroine  of 
Hardy's  novel,  A  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes 
(1873),  who  falls  in  love  first  with 
Stephen  Smith  and  next  with  Henry 
Knight — marries  the  wrong  lover  and 
dies. 

She  is  as  fresh  in  fiction  as  she  Is  lovable 
and  natural.  With  all  her  complexities 
of  action,  she  is  essentially  very  simple.  She 
desires  to  love  and  to  be  loved,  and,  when 
her  father  forbids  the  thought  of  Stephen 
Smith,  she  runs  away  with  him  "to  make 
sure,"  and  when  afterwards  she  falls  more 
profoundly  in  love  with  Knight,  the  sense 
of  having  first  loved  some  one  else  oppresses 
her  as  a  wrong  to  him,  which  she  longs  to 
have  redressed  by  some  former  love-aflFair 
on  his  part;  she  would  like  to  show  him  how 
much  she  could  forgive  him,  but  she  has 
nothing  to  forgive  in  that  way,  and  this 
makes  it  impossible  for  her  to  tell  of  her 
own  former  engagement.  She  has  no  pride, 
she  has  only  love;  she  has  no  arts  save  in 
love,  and  thrusts  herself  a  helpless  victim 
into  the  power  of  the  wretched  woman, 
Jethway,  whom  she  had  never  wronged. — 
W.  D.  HowELLS:  Atlantic  Monthly, 
October,  1873. 

Swat,  Akhund  of,  hero  of  a  humor- 
ous poem  by  G.  T.  Lanigan.  He  was 
a  real  character.  Lanigan  assumed 
hypothetically  that  he  was  a  governor 
or  ruler  of  the  province  of  Swat,  on 
the  borders  of  India  and  Afghanistan. 
Akhund,  however,  means  a  learned 
man,  a  doctor,  a  devotee,  a  saint. 
He  was  the  object  of  pilgrimages  and 
consultations.  In  1877  the  Ameer  of 
Afghanistan  sought  his  advice  as  to 
what  course  he  should  take  regarding 
the  Russo-Turkish  war. 

Swiveller,  Richard,  in  Dickens's 
The  Old  Curiosity  Shop  (1840),  a 
good-natured,  kindly  scatter-brain 
and  spendthrift,  a  cheap  swell,  at 
once  dirty  and  smart,  gleefully  fond 
of    humming    dismal    airs,    with    a 


Sycorax 


350 


Talus 


flowery  and  even  gaudy  vocabulary. 
"  What's  the  odds,"  he  says,  apropos 
of  nothing,  "  so  long  as  the  fire  of  the 
soul  is  kindled  at  the  taper  of  con- 
viviaUty  and  the  wing  of  friendship 
never  moults  a  feather?  "  In  this 
vocabulary  "  the  rosy  "  stands  for 
wine,  "  the  balmy  "  for  sleep.  At 
Quilp's  request,  he  was  made  clerk 
to  Sampson  Brass,  but,  when  he  was 
found  to  be  too  honest  to  be  managed 
by  Quilp,  he  lost  his  situation,  fell 
ill  of  a  fever,  was  nursed  through  it 
by  the  Marchioness  (q.v.),  and  on  his 
recovery  married  her. 

Sycorax,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy. 
The  Tempest,  a  witch,  mother  of  Cali- 
ban, who  does  not  appear  on  the 
scene  but  is  mentioned  in  i,  2,  and 
V,  I.  Ariel  had  been  her  servant;  to 
punish  his  disobedience,  she  shut 
him  up  in  a  cloven  pine,  whence  after 
twelve  years  he  was  Uberated  by 
Prospero. 

Sjmorix,  in  Tennyson's  tragedy  of 
The  Cup  and  in  other  plays  based 


upon  this  semi-historic  personage, 
an  ex-tetrarch  of  Galatia  driven  away 
by  his  people,  who  returns  with  the 
Roman  forces  as  their  treacherous 
ally.  He  plots  against  his  successor 
in  the  tetrarchy,  Sinnatus,  unseats 
and  executes  him,  himself  becomes 
King  of  Galatia,  marries  Camma 
{q.v.),  the  widow  of  Sinnatus,  but  he 
and  she  die  on  the  wedding-day 
through  the  medium  of  a  poisoned 
cup  prepared  by  Camma. 

Syntax,  Dr.,  an  amiable,  simple- 
minded,  pious,  and  scholarly  cleric, 
whose  adventures  are  related  by 
William  Coombe  in  three  books 
of  octosyllabic  verse, — Dr.  Syntax's 
Tour  in  Search  of  the  Picturesque 
(1812),  Dr.  Syntax's  Tour  in  Search 
of  Consolation  (1820),  and  Dr.  Syn- 
tax's Tour  in  Search  of  a  Wife  (182 1). 
At  length  he  died,  and  then : 

The  village  wept,  the  hamlets  round 
Crowded  the  consecrated  ground, 
And  waited  there  to  see  the  end 
Of  pastor,  teacher,  father,  friend. 


Taffy,  a  familiar  name  for  a  Welsh- 
man, being  simply  Davy  (short  for 
David)  pronounced  with  an  aspira- 
tion, as  is  usual  with  Welshmen.  In 
George  du  Manner's  Trilby,  TaflFy 
is  the  nickname  of  Talbot  Wynne,  a 
Yorkshire  youth  of  good  stature, 
good  family,  and  unbounded  good- 
nature, who  marries  Miss  Bagot,  the 
sister  of  Little  Billee.  Another 
famous  Taffy  appears  in  the  ancient 
nursery  jingle  which  begins 

Taffy  was  a  Welshman, 

Taffy  was  a  thief, 
Taffy  came  to  my  house 

And  stole  a  piece  of  beef. 

Talbot,  John,  first  Earl  of 
Shrewsbury  (1388-1453),  an  EngHsh 
general,  who  was  taken  prisoner  at 
Patay  by  Joan  of  Arc  in  1429  and 
subsequently  (1442)  raised  to  the 
peerage,  appears  in  Shakespeare's 
historical  play  /  Henry  VI,  and  is 
there  anachronistically  made  Earl  of 
Shrewsbury  before  the  Bang's  coro- 
nation.   In  Act  ii,  3,  the  Countess 


of  Auvergne  alludes  to  the  fact  that 
his  name  was  such  a  terror  in  France 
that  mothers  stilled  their  babes  with 
it.  She  expresses  surprise  at  the 
insignificance  of  his  appearance. 

Talleyrand,  Prince,  French  states- 
man of  the  Napoleonic  era,  appears 
in  A  Priest  in  Spite  of  Himself,  by 
Rudyard  Kipling,  the  seventh  story 
in  volume  Rewards  and  Fairies. 
Pharaoh  Lee  tells  the  children  how 
Talleyrand  fled  to  America  after  the 
French  Revolution,  how  he  struck 
up  a  friendship  with  him,  and  how, 
later,  the  friendship  induced  Talley- 
rand, as  Napoleon's  minister  of 
finance,  to  intervene  when  Pharaoh's 
ship  was  conquered  and  his  cargo  of 
tobacco  confiscated. 

Talus,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene^ 
a  brazen  man  created  by  Vulcan  to 
guard  the  island  of  Crete,  who  be- 
comes an  attendant  upon  Artegal. 

[The  Puritans]  went  through  the  world 
like  Sir  Artegal's  iron  man.  Talus,  with  his 
flail,  crushing  and  trampling  down  oppres- 


Tamar 


351 


Tanqueray 


sors,  mingling  with  human  beings  but  having 
neither  part  nor  lot  in  human  infirmities; 
insensible  to  fatigue,  to  pleasure,  and  to 
pain,  not  to  be  pierced  by  any  weapon, 
not  to  be  withstood  by  any  barrier. — 
Macaulay:    Essay  on  Milton. 

Tamar,  in  W.  S.  Lander's  poem, 
Gebir,  the  brother  of  the  titular  hero, 
an  aspiring  shepherd,  full  of  the  lust 
of  conquest.  A  sea-nymph,  falling 
in  love  with  him,  carries  him  off  to 
dwell  with  her  forever  beyond  the 
reach  of  human  ambition. 

Tamburlaine,  hero  of  Marlowe's 
Tamhurlaine  the  Great,  or  the  Scythian 
Shepherd  and  the  Scourge  of  God,  a 
tragedy  in  verse,  acted  1587,  printed 
1590.  Based  on  the  life  and  death 
of  the  historic  Timur  or  Tamerlane, 
the  Tartar  conquerer  of  Asia  (1336- 
1405),  it  is  in  two  parts,  Part  i  dealing 
with  his  exploits,  Part  ii  with  the 
death  of  his  consort  and  himself. 
Tamburlaine  is  one  of  the  most  terrific 
figures  in  literature.  He  ascends  ihis 
throne  on  the  necks  of  prostrate  em- 
perors; he  harnesses  to  his  chariot 
relays  of  kings  and  princes  fattened 
on  raw  meat  and  maddened  with  pails 
of  muscadel;  he  kills  one  of  his  sons 
for  cowardice;  he  rips  up  the  flesh  of 
his  own  arm  to  teach  the  others  en- 
durance; he  bums  a  city  for  his  con- 
sort's funeral;  he  listens  with  delight 
to  the  cries  of  ravished  virgins  and 
tortured  potentates  sacrificed  for  a 
whim. 

Tamerlane  (another  and  more 
legitimate  spelling),  the  hero  of  a 
tragedy  by  Nicholas  Rowe  (1702), 
in  which  the  Asian  conqueror  is 
made  to  typify  William  III,  of 
England,  as  Bajazet  represents  Louis 
XIV.  One  of  E.  A.  Poe's  early 
poems  took  Tamerlane  as  its  titular 
hero. 

Tamora.  Queen  of  the  Goths,  in 
Titus  Andronicus. 

Tancred  (1050-1112),  the  hero  of 
the  first  Crusade,  appears  in  Tasso's 
Jerusalem  Delivered  (1575),  in  Sir 
Walter  Scott's  Count  Robert  of  Paris, 
and  in  Rossini's  opera  Tancredi 
(18 1 3).  Tasso  follows  in  outline  the 
facts  of  history.  With  Bohemond 
Tancred  landed  in  Epirus  in  1096 
and    took    the    oath    of    allegiance 


to  the  Greek  emperor  Alexius;  he 
quarrelled  with  Baldwin  for  the 
possession  of  Tarsus  and  fought 
bravely  and  successfully  before  An- 
tioch  and  Jerusalem.  After  the  con- 
quest of  Jerusalem,  he  became  Prince 
of  Galilee  and  later  Prince  of  Antioch. 
Tasso,  still  following  history,  makes 
"woman's  love"  his  one  besetting 
sin.  He  loved  much  and  often,  his 
principal  flames  being  Clorinda  and 
Erminia. 

Tancred,  hero  of  Disraeli's  novel, 
Tancred,  or  the  New  Crusade  (1847), 
the  heir  to  a  dukedom,  who,  after 
sundry  adventures  in  the  upper 
circles  of  London  society,  goes  out 
in  quest  of  light  to  the  Holy  Land. 
It  is  there  revealed  to  him,  in  a  vision, 
that  the  regeneration  of  Christendom 
must  come  from  a  new  Anglican 
Protestantism  refined  by  Judaism. 

Tanis,  nickname  of  the  heroine  of 
Amelie  Rives's  novelette,  Tanis  the, 
Sangdigger  (1894),  a  wild,  passionate 
girl  of  the  Southern  mountains — a 
savage  nature  fighting  against  its 
lower  impulses  when  suddenly  awak- 
ened to  spiritual  ideas  of  love. 

Tanner,  John  {i.e.,  Juan  Tenor),  in 
G.  B.  Shaw's  comedy,  Man  and 
Superman  (1903),  is  a  modem  Don 
Juan  as  conceived  by  Shavian  philoso- 
phy. A  voluble  exponent  of  Schopen- 
hauer and  Nietsche,  he  is  concerned 
for  the  future  of  the  race  and  not  for 
the  freedom  of  his  own  instincts. 

Confronted  with  the  stark  problem  of  the 
duel  of  sex,  Shaw  solved  it  with  the  striking 
conclusion  that  Man  is  no  longer,  like  Don 
Juan,  the  victor  in  that  duel.  Though 
sharing  neither  the  prejudices  of  the  homoist 
nor  the  enthusiasms  of  the  feminist,  Shaw 
found  it  easy  to  persuade  himself  that 
woman  has  become  dangerous,  aggressive, 
powerful.  The  r61es  established  by  romantic 
convention  and  evidenced  in  the  hackneyed 
phrase,  "Man  is  the  hunter,  woman  the 
game,"  are  now  reversed:  woman  takes  the 
Initiative  in  the  selection  of  her  mate.  Thus 
is  Don  Juan  reincarnated;  once  the  headlong 
huntsman,  he  is  now  the  helpless  quarry. 
Man  and  Superman,  in  Shaw's  own  words, 
is  "a  stage  projection  of  the  tragic-comic 
love  chase  of  the  man  by  the  woman." 

Tanqueray,  Paulina,  heroine  of  a 
drama,  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray 
(19 1 3),  by  Arthur  W.  Pinero. 


Taper 


352 


Teazle 


Dealing  in  a  novel  way  with  an  old  yet 
ever  recurring  and  interesting  problem, — 
the  woman  with  a  past  and  her  attempted 
redemption  by  a  man  with  a  future, — it 
made  a  more  profound  impression  than  any 
other  modern  English  play,  and  placed 
Pinero  in  the  front  rank  of  modern  drama- 
tists.— GusTAV  KoBBE,  Forum,  Sept.,  1898. 

Taper  and  Tadpole,  in  Disraeli's 
Coningsby  and  in  Sybil,  political 
hacks,  doing  the  dirty  work  of  the 
party,  despised  yet  courted  by  the 
wealthy  and  powerful.  Their  favorite 
epigram  runs  as  follows :  "To  receive 
£1200  per  annum  is  government;  to 
try  to  receive  £1200  is  opposition;  to 
wish  to  receive  £1200  per  annum  is 
ambition." 

Tappertit,  Sim  {i.e.,  Simon),  in 
Dickens's  novel,  Barnaby  Rudge,  the 
silly  and  conceited  apprentice  of 
Gabriel  Varden,  in  love  with  his 
daughter,  and  hence  the  bitter  enemy 
of  his  successful  rival,  Joe  Willet. 
Though  only  five  feet  high,  thin-faced, 
small-eyed,  sharp-nosed,  he  was  de- 
lighted with  his  stature  and  beauty, 
but  especially  enraptured  with  his 
legs,  which  were  miracles  of  slimness. 
His  set  fancy  was  that  his  eyes  were 
irresistible  and  that  their  might 
would  subdue  the  haughtiest  beauty. 

Tasso,  Torquato,  the  famous  Italian 
poet  (1544-95),  is  the  hero  of  Goethe's 
drama,  Tasso  (1789),  and  of  Byron's 
poem.  The  Lament  of  Tasso  (18 17). 
Both  poets  accept  the  imverified 
legend  that  Tasso  was  enamoured  of 
Leonora  d'Este  (sister  of  his  patron, 
Alfonso,  Duke  of  Ferrara),  who  was 
seven  years  his  senior,  and  Byron 
makes  capital  of  the  imdoubted 
fiction  that  his  seven  years'  confine- 
ment ( 1 579-1 586)  as  a  lunatic  was 
due  to  brotherly  resentment.  The 
publication  of  Tasso 's  letters  by 
Guasti,  in  1853,  and,  more  recently, 
Angelo  Solerti's  Vita  di  Torquato 
Tasso  (1895),  which  is  largely  drawn 
from  family  records,  have  in  a  great 
measure  exonerated  the  duke  at  the 
expense  of  the  imhappy  poet  himself. 
Briefly,  Tasso 's  intrigues  with  rival 
powers — the  Medici  at  Florence,  the 
papal  court,  and  the  Holy  Office  at 
Bologna — aroused  the  alarm  and 
suspicion   of   the   duke,    whilst   his 


general  demeanor  and  his  outbursts 
of  violence  and  temper  compelled, 
rather  than  afforded,  a  pretext  for 
his  confinement;  and,  to  quote  his 
own  words,  "in  a  fit  of  madness  " 
he  broke  out  into  execrations  of  the 
ducal  court  and  family,  and  of  the 
people  of  Ferrara.  For  this  offence 
he  was  shut  up  in  the  Hospital  of 
Sant'  Anna. 

Tattle,  in  Congreve's  comedy.  Love 
for  Love  (1695),  a  more  egregious  sort 
of  Sparkish  {q.v.),  who  is  described 
in  Act  i  as  "a  mixture  of  lying, 
foppery,  vanity,  cowardice,  bragging, 
licentiousness,  and  ugliness."  Though 
priding  himself  on  his  secrecy,  he  is 
continually  boasting  of  his  amours. 

Tearsheet,  Doll,  in  Shakespeare's 
//  Henry  IV,  a.  woman  of  low  char- 
acter. In  Henry  V,  11,  Pistol  recom- 
mends her  to  Nym.  Prince  Hal's 
remark  (//  Henry  IV,  11,  ii),  "  This 
Doll  Tearsheet  should  be  some  road," 
has  started  a  conjecture  that  her 
name  is  a  misprint  or  a  corruption 
from  Tear-street. 

Teazle,  Sir  Peter,  a  leading  char- 
acter in  Sheridan's  comedy,  The 
School  for  Scandal  (1777),  an  old  and 
testy  aristocrat,  married  to  a  young 
cotmtry  girl,  whom  he  is  perpetually 
depreciating  to  her  face  for  her  rustic 
ways  and  humble  birth,  though  he 
really  loves  her  and  admires  her 
naivete  and  imagined  innocence. 
"  I  am  the  sweetest-tempered  man 
alive,"  he  says,  with  imconscious 
self -betrayal,  "  and  hate  a  teasing 
temper,  and  so  I  tell  her  ladyship  a 
hundred  times  a  day." 

Lady  Teazle,  his  wife,  is  repre- 
sented at  the  opening  of  the  play  as 
"  a  lively  and  innocent,  though  im- 
prudent, country  girl,  transplanted 
into  the  midst  of  all  that  can  bewilder 
and  endanger  her,  but  with  still 
enough  of  the  purity  of  rural  life 
about  her  heart  to  keep  the  blight  of 
the  world  from  settling  upon  it  per- 
manently." Nevertheless,  she  man- 
ages to  get  entangled  in  an  affair 
with  the  arch-hypocrite  Joseph  Sur- 
face (q.v.),  from  which  she  emerges 
with  damaged  reputation  but  repent- 
ant and  reformed. 


Tempest 


353 


Thaisa 


Tempest,  Lady  Betty,  in  Gold- 
smith's Citizen  of  the  World,  xxviii 
(1859),  an  old  maid  who,  in  her 
brilliant,  blooming,  but  too  romantic 
youth,  had  turned  down  all  her 
suitors  because  none  exactly  fulfilled 
her  ideals,  and  so  was  left  to  become 
a  wallflower  and  "  a  piece  of  fashion- 
able lumber." 

Tempest,  Nancy,  heroine  of  Rhoda 
Broughton's  novel,  Nancy,  a  romp 
and  a  hoyden,  who,  out  of  affection 
for  her  family  and  to  relieve  them  in 
their  necessities,  has  married  the 
elderly  Sir  Roger  Tempest,  and  learns 
to  love  him  only  after  many  complica- 
tions and  misunderstandings* 

Temple,  Charlotte,  heroine  of  a 
once  popular  novel  by  Susanna  Has- 
well  Rowson  (1790),  founded  on  fact. 
Her  real  name  was  Charlotte  Stanley, 
and  she  was  an  English  school-girl, 
induced  to  come  to  New  York  by  her 
betrayer,  an  English  officer,  Lieuten- 
ant-Colonel Montresor, — the  Colonel 
Montraville  of  the  novel, — and  aban- 
doned there.  She  died  after  child- 
birth. There  is  a  monument  to  her 
memory  over  her  grave  in  Trinity 
Church  graveyard,  New  York  City. 
Colonel  Montraville  afterward  mar- 
ried in  New  York.  By  a  strange 
Nemesis,  his  eldest  son  became  en- 
gaged to  a  girl  who  turned  out  to  be 
his  own  daughter  by  Charlotte.  This 
part  of  the  story  is  told  in  the  sequel, 
Charlotte's  Daughter^  published  post- 
hvmiously. 

'  Temple,  Henrietta,  titular  heroine 
of  a  novel  (1837)  by  Benjamin 
Disraeli.  In  real  life  she  was  Henri- 
etta Villebois,  married  (1821)  to  Sir 
Francis  William  Sykes  of  Basildoun, 
died  1846. 

Templeton,  Laurence,  the  pseudo- 
nym imder  which  Sir  Walter  Scott 
published  Ivanhoe  in  the  original 
edition  (1820).  The  preface  is  ini- 
tialed L.  T.,  and  the  dedication  by 
"  Laurence  Templeton "  is  to  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Dryasdust.  In  a  subse- 
quent edition  Scott  explained  that 
there  was  "  no  desire  or  wish  to  pass 
off  the  supposed  Mr.  Templeton  as 
a  real  person.  But  a  kind  of  continu- 
ation of  The  Tales  of  my  Landlord 


had  been  recently  attempted  by  a 
stranger;  and  it  was  supposed  this 
Dedicatory  Epistle  might  pass  for 
some  imitation  of  the  same  kind, 
and  thus  putting  inquirers  upon  a 
false  scent,  induce  them  to  believe 
they  had  before  them  the  work  of 
some  new  candidate  for  their  favor." 

Tennessee's  Partner,  in  a  story  of 
that  name  by  Bret  Harte  (1871),  the 
all-forgiving  associate  of  a  scoundrel, 
known  in  camp  as  Tennessee,  who 
runs  away  with  the  partner's  wife, 
returns  without  her,  is  received  back 
into  partnership,  is  arrested  for 
highway  robbery,  and  hanged,  after 
a  vain  effort  by  Partner  to  bribe  the 
self-constituted  court  with  his  entire 
fortune — "$1700  in  coarse  gold  and 
a  watch." 

Tessa,  in  George  Eliot's  Romola, 
an  innocent  Tuscan  peasant  girl  who 
is  bigamously  married  by  Tito 
Melemma  (g.v.). 

Testy,  Timothy,  a  grouty  pessimist, 
in  Beresford's  Miseries  of  Human 
Life. 

Teuf elsdrockh,  Diogenes,  Professor 
of  Things  in  General  at  Weissnichto 
in  Germany,  the  feigned  author  of 
Carlyle's  Sartor  Resartus  (1833-34), 
which  claims  to  consist  only  of  char- 
acteristic passages  translated  from  the 
original  German  and  held  together 
with  a  nmning  commentary.  Teufels- 
drockh^  (the  name  means  Devil's 
dung)  is  described,  in  Book  11,  as  a 
foundling  who  had  been  brought  up 
by  Andreas  Futteral,  a  farmer,  and 
Gretchen  his  wife,  had  passed  with 
no  special  credit  through  the  gym- 
nasium and  the  university,  had 
studied  law  and  renounced  its  prac- 
tice, had  lost  to  a  luckier  suitor  the 
fair  Blumine  whom  he  loved,  had 
plimged  into  all  manner  of  doubt  and 
despair,  and  had  finally  emerged  with 
the  conviction  that  blessedness  was 
better  than  happiness,  and  that  the 
idea  of  his  baffled  dreams  was  to  be 
found  in  the  real  life  around  him. 

Thaisa,  in  Shakespeare's  Pericles, 
Prince  of  Tyre  (1608),  the  wife  of 
Pericles  and  mother  of  Marina.  Dy- 
ing it  was  supposed  in  childbirth,  she 
was  cast  into  the  sea,  but  miracu- 


Thalaba 


354 


Theobald 


lously  revived  and  became  a  priestess 
of  Diana  at  Ephesus. 

Thalaba,  a  famous  figure  in  Oriental 
mythology,  whom  Robert  Southey 
took  as  the  hero  of  his  epic,  Thalaba  the 
Destroyer  (1801).  He  was  "  father- 
less, motherless,  sisterless,  brother- 
less,"  for  Hodeirah  and  Zeinab,  his 
parents,  had  left  him  orphaned  in 
early  youth  and  before  their  death 
all  the  eight  other  children  had  been 
cut  off  by  the  Dom-Danielists  {q.v.). 
Even  he  had  almost  fallen  a  victim 
to  an  evil  spirit  sent  from  Dom- 
Daniel  (see  Abdaldar),  but  had 
escaped  with  Abdaldar's  magic  ring. 
Thereupon  he  set  out  on  his  retribu- 
tive mission  as  the  Destroyer  of 
Dom-Daniel.  He  successively  baffled 
the  stratagems  of  Lobaba,  a  sorcerer, 
and  of  Mohahreb,  another  evil  spirit, 
resisted  the  seductions  of  the  paradise 
of  pleasure,  rescued  therefrom  the 
maiden  Oneiza,  whom  he  married  but 
who  died  on  the  bridal  night,  and 
finally  succumbed  to  the  strategy  of 
Maimana  {q.v.),  recovered  his  liberty, 
was  befriended  by  Laila,  first  in  the 
flesh  and  when  she  died,  then  by  her 
spirit.  Under  her  tutelary  guidance 
he  reached  Dom-Daniel,  slew  all  the 
surviving  sorcerers,  and,  having  ac- 
complished his  mission,  was  taken 
up  into  heaven. 

Thekla,  in  Schiller's  drama,  Wallen- 
stein,  daughter  of  the  hero,  a  lovely 
and  pathetic  figure  but  without  any 
historical  justification. 

Thelema,  Abbey  of,  in  Rabelais's 
Gargantua,  an  imaginary  establish- 
ment whose  motto.  Fay  ce  que  Voul- 
dras  (old  Fr.  "  Do  what  you  will  "), 
sufficiently  illustrates  the  principles 
on  which  it  was  conducted.  Pre- 
sented by  Grangousier  to  Friar  John 
as  a  reward  for  his  services  in  the 
subjection  of  Lem^,  it  was  the  very 
reverse  of  a  Catholic  religious  house, 
being  specially  dedicated  to  luxurious 
enjoyment,  bodily  and  mental  recrea- 
tion, and  intellectual  companionship. 
Religious  hypocrites,  lawyers,  and 
usurers  are  excluded,  but  gallant 
gentlemen  and  brilliant  ladies  are 
welcomed  with  effusion.  Walter  Be- 
sant  and  James  Rice  in  1878  collabo- 


rated on  a  novel  entitled  The  Monks 
of  Thelema,  in  which  a  wealthy  nine- 
teenth-century idealist,  Alan  Dunlop, 
seeks  to  revive  on  English  soil  the 
Liberty  Hall  of  mediaeval  French 
imagination.    See  Rondelet,  Mr. 

It  is  always  delicate  and  invidious  work 
to  criticise  what  is  meant  to  be  humorous 
caricature,  because  one  is  naturally  met 
with  the  obvious  retort  that  your  practical 
mind  is  too  dull  to  appreciate  it.  Yet  we 
maintain  that  nineteenth-century  caricature 
should  at  least  have  some  slight  substratum 
of  possibility;  and  the  conditions  of  the 
existence  of  this  community  of  Thelema  are 
simply  and  glaringly  impossible  on  the  face 
of  them.  Never  would  the  shrew  chaperons 
of  the  period  so  far  abdicate  their  respon- 
sibilities and  interests  as  to  allow  a  bevy  of 
beautiful  and  richly-dowered  maidens  to 
live  in  unrestricted  everyday  intercourse 
with  a  group  of  gay  and  fascinating  bache- 
lors, some  of  whom  were  eminently  ineligi- 
ble.— Saturday  Review,  October  5.  1878. 

Thelluson,  Hannah,  titular  heroine 
of  Hannah  (1871),  a  novel  by  Dinah 
Mulock  Craik.  On  the  death  of  her 
married  sister,  the  widower.  Rev. 
Bernard  Rivers,  invites  her  to  take 
charge  of  his  home  and  infant  daugh- 
ter. The  gentle  woman  of  thirty 
sees  no  harm  in  this  arrangement, 
though  it  scandahzes  the  Rivers  and 
their  circle.  Of  course  the  pair  fall 
in  love,  and  after  vainly  struggling 
against  fate  they  marry  and  defy 
their  worst. 

Theobald,  Mrs.  Jane,  heroine  of 
Mrs.  Edwards's  novel,  Ought  we  to 
Visit  Her  ?,  a  young  girl  of  Bohemian 
origin  and  associations. 

The  people  who  will  not  visit  her  are  the 
relations  of  Mr.  Theobald,  and  all  the 
respectable  people  in  Chalkshire,  among 
whom  he  takes  her  to  live  after  a  free, 
happy,  haphazard  life  on  the  Continent. 
It  would  be  a  pity  to  tell  the  story,  further 
than  to  say  that  the  pretty,  good-hearted, 
witty,  charming  little  victim,  shunned  for 
no  reason  by  these  good  people,  and  deserted 
by  her  worthless  husband,  who  takes  up  an 
old  flirtation  with  an  old  reprobate  fine  lady 
to  beguile  the  dulness  of  Chalkshire,  comes 
near  being  driven  into  wickedness,  but  is 
saved  on  the  way  to  elopement  by  one  of 
those  sudden  fevers  which  lie  in  wait  in 
novels,  and  is  reconciled  to  her  husband, 
and  joyfully  leaves  Chalkshire  with  him 
and  goes  back  to  their  free  life  on  the  Con- 
tinent. Dull  respectability  and  convention 
are  too  much  for  them,  and  they  must  fly 
or  be  crushed;  yet  she  has  done  no  wrong. — 
W.  D.  HowELLS,  in  Atlantic  Monthly. 


Theodora 


355 


Thomberry 


Theodora,  in  Disraeli's  novel,  Lo- 
ihair,  a  brilliant  American  woman,  a 
devotee  to  the  cause  of  Garibaldi  and 
United  Italy,  with  whom  Lothair 
falls  platonically  in  love,  and  whose 
influence  saves  him  from  the  machina- 
tions of  Catesby  and  other  Roman 
Cathohc  friends.  She  is  drawn  from 
a  real  person  (wife  of  Colonel  Cham- 
bers, an  Englishman),  who  was  in 
fact  the  pillar  of  the  Italian  cause, 
for,  like  the  Ayesha  of  Mahomet,  she 
believed  in  Garibaldi  from  the  first, 
encouraged  him  in  his  efiforts,  glorified 
him  in  success,  consoled  him  in  defeat, 
and,  above  all,  supplied  him  with  the 
nerve  and  sinews  of  the  war  on  which 
he  had  entered.  Among  Garibaldi's 
followers  she  was  known  as  the 
"  Padrona." 

Theodora  had  espoused  the  cause  of 
Italian  freedom  with  an  enthusiasm  border- 
ing on  frenzy,  and  was  most  gallantly- 
seconded  by  her  husband  in  her  endeavors. 
She  was  reported  in  the  Italian  papers  as 
not  being  in  any  one  feature  like  an  English- 
woman (which  is  the  highest  praise  that  can 
be  awarded  to  a  woman  on  the  Continent). 
It  is  certain  that,  with  her  dark,  flashing 
eyes  and  jet-black  hair,  she  was  as  unlike 
as  possible  to  the  ordinary  British  matron. 
She  was  far  from  handsome  in  countenance, 
but  there  was  a  certain  picturesque  wild- 
ness  in  her  expression  which  never  failed 
to  elicit  from  strangers  the  question  of 
"Who  is  she?"  Her  dark  hair  was  parted 
over  the  forehead  and  tucked  behind  her 
ears,  and  fell  in  two  thick  curls  down  her 
neck,  in  the  fashion  of  Sir  Joshua's  latest 
pictures.  Her  dress  was  always  of  the 
simplest  fashion,  though  made  of  rich 
materials.  In  short,  it  was  impossible  for 
those  who  had  once  beheld  Theodora  ever 
to  forget  her. — Birmingham  Post. 

Therese,  Madame,  in  Erckmann- 
Chatrian's  novel  of  that  name,  a  vi- 
vandi^re  of  rare  elevation  of  character 
who  is  left  for  dead  in  the  streets  of  a 
little  village  in  the  Vosges  after  a 
fierce  conflict  in  which  her  soldier 
comrades  are  engaged  with  the  Aus- 
trian troops  and  rescued  by  a  philan- 
thropic old  doctor  from  the  inhu- 
manity of  the  villagers  and  the  ven- 
geance of  the  Austrians. 

Theseus,  in  A  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream  (1594),  the  Duke  of  Athens, 
husband  of  Hippolyta,  before  whom, 
as  part  of  the  marriage  festivities,  is 
enacted  the  play  within  a  play  of 
Pyramus    and     Thishe.      They    are 


classical  in  name  only,  being  in 
reality  romantic  mediaeval  figures. 
See  Theseus  in  vol.  11. 

Theseus  is  Shakespeare's  early  ideal  of  a 
heroic  warrior  and  man  of  action.  His  life 
is  one  of  splendid  achievement  and  of  joy; 
his  love  is  a  kind  of  happy  victory,  his 
marriage  a  triumph.  From  early  morning, 
when  his  hounds — themselves  heroic  crea- 
tures— fill  the  valley  with  their  "musical 
confusion,"  until  midnight,  when  the  Athe- 
nian clowns  end  their  "very  tragical  mirth" 
with  a  Bergomask  dance,  Theseus  displays 
his  joyous  energy  and  the  graciousness  of 
power. — E.  Dowden:    Shakespeare  Primer. 

Thisbe,  heroine  of  the  interlude  in 
A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  In 
classic  mythology  she  is  a  beautiful 
maiden  of  Babylon,  beloved  by  Pyra- 
mus, whom  she  is  not  allowed  to 
marry.  They  succeed,  however,  in 
commimicating  with  one  another 
through  a  chink  in  a  wall ;  whence  the 
amusing  episode  in  Shakespeare's 
play: 

And  through  wall's  chink,  poor  souls,  they 

are  content 
To  whisper. 

See  Pyramus  and  Wall. 

Thomberry,  Job,  in  Beaconsfield's 
novel,  Endymion  (1880),  a  political 
agitator,  who  is  evidently  drawn  from 
Richard  Cobden. 

Mr.  Job  Thomberry  represents  Mr.  Cob- 
den, whose  eloquence  is  felicitously  de- 
scribed in  an  account  of  a  Corn-law  meeting 
at  Manchester.  The  circumstances  of  Mr. 
Thornberry's  later  life  would  have  perplexed 
and  annoyed  his  living  prototype.  Mrs. 
Thomberry,  who  is  first  introduced  as  a 
zealous  devotee  of  a  Unitarian  preacher, 
joins  the  Roman  communion;  and  his  son, 
John  Hampden  Thomberry,  puts  up  por- 
traits of  Laud  and  Straflford  over  his  mantel- 
piece, and,  "embossed  in  golden  letters  on 
a  purple  ground,  the  magical  word  Thor- 
ough." The  same  whimsical  young  gentle- 
man always  addresses  his  father  as  "Squire," 
and  cultivates  an  extraordinary  passion  for 
game-preserving.  Job  Thornberry's  |' in- 
telligence was  as  clear  as  ever,  and  his  views 
on  all  subjects  unchanged;  but  he  was  like 
many  other  men,  governed  at  home  by  his 
affections."  .  .  .  The  son's  iiame, 
"Hampden."  is  perhaps  unconsciously  sug- 
gested by  the  residence  of  the  Thornberrys 
at  Hurtley,  which  is  identified  by  descrip- 
tion with  Great  Hampden,  an  historical 
house  and  small  hamlet  not  far  from  Hugh- 
enden.  Job's  domestic  philosophy  is  an 
additional  illustration  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
supremacy  of  personal  motives  and  influ- 
ence.— Saturday  Review. 


Thome 


356 


Thundertentronckh 


Thome,  Dr.,  in  Trollope's  novel  of 
that  name,  a  physician  in  the  village 
of  Greshambury,  an  independent, 
honest  gentleman  who  looks  after  his 
niece  Mary  Thome,  a  sweet,  modest 
girl  in  love  with  Frank  Gresham, 
whom  she  eventually  marries. 

Thomhill,  Sir  William,  in  Gold- 
smith's Vicar  of  Wakefield,  a  pre- 
tended cynic,  but  really  a  philan- 
thropist, who  assumes  the  incognito 
of  Mr.  Burchell,  in  order  the  better 
to  assist  the  unhappy,  the  deserving 
poor,  and  the  oppressed.  Hating 
shams  of  all  sorts,  his  ahnost  in- 
voluntary cry  of  "  Fudge!  "  at  any 
exhibition  of  snobbishness  or  pre- 
tension, has  become  a  by- word.  He 
is  a  constant  visitor  at  the  home  of 
Dr.  Primrose,  the  titular  vicar,  falls 
in  love  with  and  eventually  marries 
one  of  his  daughters,  Sophia,  and 
succeeds  in  saving  her  sister,  Olivia, 
from  undeserved  shame,  incurred 
through  his  own  nephew,  by  proving 
that  what  the  squire  had  fancied  was 
a  mere  mock  marriage  was  in  fact  a 
legal  one. 

Thomhill,  Squire,  in  Goldsmith's 
Vicar  of  Wakefield,  the  prodigal  and 
libertine  nephew  of  Sir  William 
Thornhill,  who  abducts  both  the 
vicar's  daughters,  casts  the  vicar 
himself  into  jail,  and  imagines  that 
he  has  betrayed  Olivia  Primrose,  the 
younger  daughter,  into  a  mock 
marriage,  which  to  his  discomfiture 
turns  out  to  be  entirely  legal. 

Thorpe,  Charles,  afterward  Lord 
Medway,  a  leading  character  in 
Quits  (1858),  a  novel  by  Baroness 
Tautphoeus.  He  is  successively  the 
enemy,  the  reluctant  lover,  the 
rejected  suitor,  and  in  the  end  the 
accepted  husband  of  the  heroine, 
Nora  Nixon. 

We  afterward  talked  long  about  Quits, 
and  she  told  me  that  the  character  of  Thorpe 
was  a  favorite  bit  of  work;  that  she  had 
taken  great  pains  with  it,  as  she  wished  to 
produce  a  typical  Englishman  of  the  best 
class,  with  all  his  fine  qualities,  and  the 
defects  inseparable  from  these  qualities;  and 
the  most  charming  arch  smile  lit  up  her 
face  as  she  said,  "I  must  think  that  I  suc- 
ceeded with  Thorpe,  for  after  Quits  was 
published  I  had  several  verv  angry  letters 
from  some  English  cousins  of  mine,  any  one 


of  whom  might  have  sat  (with  some  slight 
changes)  for  the  portrait  of  Thorpe,  and 
every  one  of  them  reproached  me  in  no 
measured  terms  for  'putting  a  fellow  into  a 
book.'  So  you  see  they  fitted  the  cap  upon 
themselves. ' ' — Baroness  Tautphoeus.  An 
interview  in  Atlantic  Monthly,  July,   1894. 

Thorpe,  John,  in  Jane  Austen's 
novel,  Northanger  Abbey  (written  in 
1798),  a  horsey,  slangy  imdergradu- 
ate,  vain,  boastful,  vulgar,  who 
rejoices  in  flashy  clothes  and  be- 
wilders Catherine  Morland  by  his 
tall  talk.  "  She  had  not  been  brought 
up  to  understand  the  propensities  of 
a  rattle,  nor  to  know  to  how  many 
idle  assertions  and  impudent  false- 
hoods an  excess  of  vanity  will  lead." 

Thoughtless,  Betsy,  heroine  of  a 
novel,  The  History  of  Miss  Betsy 
Thoughtless  (1751),  by  Mrs.  Eliza 
Haywood,  describing  the  debut  into 
London  society  of  a  giddy  and  inex- 
perienced but  right-minded  girl,  and 
the  various  perils  she  escaped  from 
the  dissolute  set  amid  which  she  was 
laimched.  The  novel  is  chiefly  inter- 
esting to-day  from  having  furnished 
hints  to  Miss  Bumey  for  her  far 
superior  Evelina. 

Thule,  Princess  of.  See  Mac- 
kenzie, Sheila. 

Thunderer,  The,  a  name  bestowed 
upon  The  Times,  in  allusion  to  the 
vigorous  articles  contributed  to  it  at 
one  time  by  Edward  Sterling,  who 
possessed  a  literary  style  of  consider- 
able power. 

It  appears  that  the  Times  provided 
the  occasion  and  even  the  word.  Two 
women  had  been  bespattered  with 
mud  by  a  horseman  riding  too  close 
to  them,  and  the  Times  published  a 
harsh  reproof  of  the  Duke  of  Cum- 
berland, the  supposed  offender.  A 
denial  was  made  on  behalf  of  the 
duke,  and  the  Times  recanted,  pub- 
lishing a  second  article,  which  began 
with  the  words:  "  When  a  few  days 
ago  we  thundered  out."  That  struck 
the  public  as  the  right  word  for  what 
the  Times  was  generally  doing  in 
those  days,  and  "  The  Thunderer  " 
became  the  Times' s  nickname. 

Thundertentronckh,  Arminius  von, 
the  nom  de  plume  under  which  Mat- 
thew    Arnold     contributed     several 


Thurio 


357 


Timias 


papers  of  a  satirical  character  to  the 
pages  of  The  Poll  Mall  Gazette. 
These,  with  one  or  two  others  origi- 
nally published  in  The  Cornhill  Maga- 
zine, were  republished  In  Friendship's 
Garland,  which  the  editor  pretended 
to  have  woven  as  a  memorial  of  his 
dead  friend. 

Mr.  Arnold's  "genial  and  somewhat 
esoteric  philosophy,"  if  I  may  borrow  a 
phrase  applied  by  Sir  George  Trevelyan  to 
his  uncle,  is  nowhere  more  compendiously 
stated  than  in  Friendship's  Garland,  which 
appeared  in  a  complete  form  at  the  begin- 
ning of  1 87 1.  The  history  of  this  little  book 
is  curious.  The  letters  of  which  it  consists 
were  first  printed  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazelle, 
when  that  journal  of  many  vicissitudes  was 
edited  by  Mr.  Frederick  Greenwood.  They 
extend  over  a  period  of  four  years,  from 
1866  to  1870,  dealing  chiefly  with  the  vic- 
tories of  Prussia  over  Austria,  and  of  Ger- 
many over  France.  Attributed  to  a  young 
Prussian,  Arminius  von  Thunder-ten- 
Tronckh,  whose  name  is  of  course  taken 
from  Candide,  they  really  represent  Mr. 
Arnold's  views  upon  the  characteristic 
deficiencies  of  his  countrymen. — Howard 
Paul. 

Thtirio,  in  The  Two  Gentlemen  of 
Verona,  a  rival  of  Valentine  in  the 
love  of  Silvia. 

Thurston,  Hannah,  heroine  and 
title  of  a  novel  by  Bayard  Taylor 
(1864).  At  the  age  of  thirty  she 
renounces  marriage  to  take  up  an 
ardent  advocacy  of  woman  suffrage. 
She  is  at  the  height  of  her  village 
influence,  recognized  by  all  as  a 
woman  whom  it  is  possible  for  men 
to  love,  yet  with  something  in  her 
beyond  womanhood  when  she  meets 
her  conqueror  in  Maxwell  Woodbury. 

Thwackum,  Parson  Roger,  in  Field- 
ing's History  of  Tom  Jones  (1749),  a 
clerical  pedagogue,  learned,  honest, 
and  not  unworthy,  but  intensely 
selfish  and  endowed  with  a  furious 
temper.  As  to  his  personal  appear- 
ance we  are  told  (Bk.  iii,  Chap.  6), 
"  The  pedagogue  did  in  coimtenance 
very  nearly  resemble  that  gentleman 
who  in  the  Harlot's  Progress  [by 
Hogarth]  is  seen  correcting  the  ladies 
in  Bridewell. 

Thyrsis,  the  name  under  which 
Matthew  Arnold  deplored  the  death 
of  his  friend  Arthur  Hugh  Clough 
(1819-1861),  who  died  in  Florence. 
Thyrsis     is    a    monody    or     elegy 


modelled  not  on  Milton  (though  the 
theme  suggests  Lycidas  and  Edward 
ICing),  but  on  Theocritus.  Clough, 
however,  had  an  individuality  of  his 
own,  and  is  not  likely  to  become  a 
mere  name  like  the  Reverend  Mr. 
King. 

Tibbs,  Beau,  a  make-believe  dandy 
and  man-about-town  in  Goldsmith's 
Citizen  of  the  World  (1789). 

The  poor  little  pinched  pretender  to 
fashion,  with  his  tarnished  finery  and  his 
reed-voiced,  simpering  helpmate, — with  his 
coffee-house  cackle  of  my  Lord  Mudler  and 
the  Duchess  of  Piccadilly,  and  his  magnifi- 
cent promises  of  turbot  and  ortolan,  which 
issue  pitifully  in  postponed  ox-cheek  and 
bitter  beer, — approaches  the  dimensions  of 
a  masterpiece.  Charles  Lamb,  one  would 
think,  must  have  rejoiced  over  the  reckless 
assurance  which  expatiates  on  the  charming 
view  of  the  Thames  from  the  garret  of  a 
back-street  in  the  suburbs,  which  glorifies 
the  "paltry  unframed  pictures  on  its  walls 
into  essays  in  the  manner  of  the  celebrated 
Grisoni,  and  transforms  a  surly  Scotch 
hag-of-all-work  into  an  old  and  privileged 
family  servant. — Austin  Dobson:  Eigh- 
teenth Century  Vignettes. 

Tickler,  Timothy,  one  of  the  inter- 
locutors in  the  Noctes  Ambrosiana 
and  a  frequent  contributor  under 
that  pseudonym  to  Blackwood's 
Magazine,  wa§  Robert  Sym,  an 
Edinburgh  lawyer  (i 750-1 854). 

Tilbiuima,  in  Sheridan's  comedy, 
The  Critic,  the  daughter  of  the 
governor  of  Tilbury  Fort  (hence  the 
name).  He  is  "a  plain  matter-of- 
fact  man,"  while  his  offspring  is  a 
love-lorn  maiden,  full  of  tears  and 
sighs,  raptures  and  ravings.  Both 
these  characters  appear  in  Mr.  Puff's 
tragedy.  The  Spanish  Armada,  which 
is  supposed  to  be  under  rehearsal  for 
critical  approval  or  emendation. 

An  oyster  may  be  crossed  in  love,  says 
the  gentle  Tilburina, — and  a  drover  may 
be  touched  on  a  point  of  honor,  says  the 
Chronicler  of  the  Canongate.— Sir  W. 
Scott. 

Tim,  Tiny,  in  Dickens's  Christmas 
Carol,  is  the  little  crippled  son  of 
Bob  Cratchit.  His  happy  sentiment, 
"  God  bless  us,  every  one,"  is  now  a 
household  word. 

Timias,  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene, 
the  squire  to  King  Arthur,  who  falls 
honorably  in  love  with  Belphoebe  in 


Timon 


358 


Titania 


Book  iii,  6,  but  in  Book  iv,  7,  is  dis- 
covered by  that  lady  in  wanton  dalli- 
ance with  Amoret. 

The  affection  of  Timias  for  Belphoebe  is 
allowed,  on  all  hands,  to  allude  to  Sir  Wal- 
ter Raleigh's  pretended  admiration  of 
Queen  Elizabeth;  and  his  disgrace,  on  ac- 
count of  a  less  platonic  intrigue  with  the 
daughter  of  Sir  Nicholas  Throgmorton, 
together  with  his  restoration  to  favor,  are 
plainly  pointed  out  in  the  subsequent  events. 
But  no  commentator  has  noticed  the  beau- 
tiful insinuation  by  which  the  poet  points 
out  the  error  of  his  friend,  and  of  his  friend's 
wife.  Timias  finds  Amoret  in  the  arms  of 
Corflambo,  or  sensual  passion:  he  combats 
the  monster  unsuccessfully,  and  wounds 
the  lady  in  his  arms. — Sir  W.  Scott. 

Timon,  hero  of  a  tragedy  by  Shake- 
speare, Timon  of  Athens  (1607). 

Timon  of  Athens  is  the  exhibition  of  a 
single  character  in  contrasted  situations. 
Timon  is  rich  and  generous,  which  is  matter 
for  the  first  act;  his  riches  and  his  friends 
fail  him  in  the  second  and  third  acts;  he 
retires  to  a  desert  outside  the  city,  curses 
mankind,  and  dies,  which  climax  is  the 
theme  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  acts.  There 
is  nothing  in  all  Shakespeare's  work  more 
stupendous  than  the  colossal  figure  of 
Timon,  raining  his  terrible  imprecations 
on  the  littleness  and  falsehood  of  mankind. 
Yet  the  play  as  a  whole  is  unsatisfying, 
because  the  cause  Is  inadequate  to  produce 
the  effect. — Walter  Raleigh:  Shakespeare, 

p.  112. 

Tinto,  Dick,  a  "celebrated" 
painter  in  Scott's  novel,  St.  Ronan's 
Well  (1823),  who  restores  Meg  Dods's 
sign,  gilds  the  bishop's  crook,  and 
augments  the  horrors  of  the  Devil's 
aspect.  He  had  previously  appeared 
in  the  introduction  to  The  Bride  of 
Lamntermoor  (18 19),  as  supplying 
the  material  for  that  tale  to  Peter 
Pattieson. 

Titania,  in  A  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream  (1592),  the  Queen  of  the 
Fairies  and  consort  of  Oberon.  In 
Shakespeare's  day  the  fairies  were 
identified  with  the  classic  nymphs, 
attendants  of  Diana.  Hence  Titania, 
an  alternative  name  for  Diana,  was 
selected  as  the  designation  for  the 
queen  of  his  midnight  sprites.  Cf. 
King  James  I:  "That  fourth  kind 
of  spirits  quhilt  by  the  Gentiles  was 
called  Diana  and  her  wandering  court, 
and  amongst  us  called  the  Phairee." 

Tyrwhitt  suggests  that  the  progeni- 
tors of  Oberon  and  Titania  may  be 


found  in  Chaucer's  Marchantes  Tale^ 
where  Pluto  is  the  king  of  faerie  and 
his  queen  Proserpina,  "who  danced 
and  sung  about  the  wall  under  the 
laurel  in  January's  garden."  But 
otherwise  there  is  not  much  resem- 
blance. Kiiight  opines  that  in 
Chaucer's  Wife  of  Bathes  Tale, 
*'  Shakespeare  found  the  popular 
superstition  presented  in  that  spirit 
of  gladsone  revelry  which  it  was 
reserved  for  him  to  work  out  in  his 
matchless  drama. 

*'In  old  days  ol  King  Artour, 
Of  which  that  Bretens  speken  gret  honour. 
All  was  this  land  fulfilled  of  faerie; 
The  elfe-queene  with  her  joly  compagnie 
Danced  ful  oft  in  many  a  grene  mede." 

May  it  not  be  said  that  Shakespeare 
took  all  these  ingredients,  the  popular 
superstitions,  the  classic  and  the 
current  lore  concerning  Diana,  and 
the  brightness  and  gayety  that 
Chaucer  had  given  to  "  the  elfe- 
queene,"  and  from  them  evoked  the 
dainty  spirit  that  the  world  for  ever- 
more knows  as  "  Titania?  " 

No  name,  indeed,  could  have  been 
more  appropriate.  It  embodies  rich 
and  complex  associations  connected 
with  the  silver  bow,  the  magic  cup, 
and  the  triple  crown;  it  embraces  in 
one  comprehensive  symbol  the  whole 
female  empire  of  mystery  and  night 
belonging  to  classical  mythology. 

Diana,  Latona,  Hecate,  are  all  goddesses 
of  night,  queens  of  the  shadowy  world, 
ruling  over  its  mystic  elements  and  spectral 
powers.  The  common  name  thus  awakens 
recollections  of  gleaming  huntresses  in  dim 
and  dewy  woods,  of  dark  rites  and  potent 
incantations  under  moonlit  skies,  of  strange 
aerial  voyages  and  ghostly  apparitions  from 
the  underworld.  It  was,  therefore,  of  all 
possible  names  the  one  best  fitted  to  desig- 
nate the  queen  of  the  same  shadowy  empire, 
with  its  phantom  troops  and  activities,  in 
the  northern  mythology.  And  since  Shake- 
speare, with  prescient  inspiration,  selected 
It  for  this  purpose,  it  has  naturally  come  to 
represent  the  whole  world  of  fairy  beauty, 
elfin  adventure,  and  goblin  sport  connected 
with  lunar  influences,  with  enchanted  herbs 
and  muttered  spells. — Thomas  S.  Baynes. 

The  Titania  of  Shakespeare's  fairy 
mythology  may  thus  be  regarded  as 
the  successor  of  Diana  and  other 
regents  of  the  night  belonging  to  the 
Greek  pantheon.^ 


Titmarsh 


359 


Tolla 


Titmarsh,  Michael  Angelo,  a  pseu- 
donym, or,  more  specifically,  an 
imaginary  character  behind  which 
Thackeray,  in  his  early  magazine 
sketches,  novels,  and  burlesques,  hid 
his  own  personaUty.  Like  Michael 
Angelo,  Thackeray  was  an  author 
artist  and  had  a  broken  nose.  In 
such  portraits  as  the  imaginary 
Titmarsh  drew  of  himself,  he  is 
sketched  as  a  small  man  with  a 
boyish  face. 

No  doubt  my  father  first  made  this 
artist's  acquaintance  at  one  of  the  studios 
In  Paris.  Very  soon  Mr.  Titmarsh 's  criti- 
cisms began  to  appear  in  various  papers 
and  magazines.  He  visited  the  salons  as 
well  as  the  exhibitions  over  here;  he  drew 
most  of  the  Christmas  books  and  wrote 
them  too.  He  had  a  varied  career.  One 
could  almost  write  his  life.  ■  For  a  time,  as 
we  know,  he  was  an  assistant  master  at 
Dr.  Birch's  Academy.  He  was  first  cousin 
to  Samuel  Titmarsh,  of  the  Great  Hoggarty 
Diamond;  also  he  painted  in  water-colors.  To 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  he  assuredly  belongs ! 
Kindly,  humorous,  delightful  little  friend, 
droll  shadow  behind  which  my  father  loved 
to  shelter  himself. — Mrs.  Anne  Thackeray 
Ritchie:  Introduction  to  "Yellow  Plush 
Papers,"  etc. 

Titmouse,  Tittlebat,  in  Samuel 
Warren's  novel,  Ten  Thousand  a 
Year,  a  vulgar,  conceited,  ignorant 
little  coxcomb,  a  linen-draper's  assist- 
ant, who  through  a  legal  technicaHty 
wins  a  fortune  of  £10,000  a  year,  but, 
after  a  brief  career  of  ostentatious 
prodigality,  is  ousted  from  the  estate. 

Toby,  Uncle.    See  Shandy. 

Todgers,  Mrs.  M.,  in  Dickens's 
Martin  Chuzzlewit,  keeper  of  a  com- 
mercial boarding-house  in  London. 
She  was  a  rather  "  bony  and  hard- 
featured  lady,  with  a  row  of  curls  in 
front  of  her  head  shaped  Hke  little 
barrels  of  beer,  and  on  the  top  of  it 
something  made  of  net — ^you  couldn't 
call  it  a  cap  exactly — which  looked 
like  a  black  cobweb."  We  have  it 
from  her  own  lips,  that  presiding  over 
such  an  estabhshment  makes  sad 
havoc  with  the  features.  "  The 
gravy  alone,"  as  she  informed  Miss 
PecksniiBf,  "  is  enough  to  add  twenty 
years  to  one's  age."  In  her  opinion 
there  was  no  such  passion  in  human 
nature  as  the  passion  for  gravy  among 
commercial    gentlemen.      Neverthe- 


less, she  owned  to  feelings  of  a  tender 
nature  for  Mr.  Pecksniff — unworthy 
though  he  was — and  befriended  his 
daughter  Mercy  after  her  unfortu- 
nate marriage  with  Jonas  Chuzzlewit. 

Toggenburg,  Ritter,  hero  of  a 
simple  and  tender  ballad  by  Schiller, 
telling  how  the  Ritter,  on  his  retiim 
from  the  Holy  Wars,  whither  he  had 
gone  to  cure  himself  of  a  hopeless 
passion,  finds  that  his  lady-love  has 
taken  the  veil,  whereupon  he  builds 
himself  a  hut  in  sight  of  the  convent, 
and  every  day  he  watches  for  the 
time  when  his  beloved  shall  appear  at 
her  window.  Finally,  one  morning, 
he  is  found  dead,  with  his  eyes  still 
turned  toward  her  casement.  The 
poem  was  evidently  suggested  by  the 
mediaeval  legend  of  Roland  and  Hilde- 
gunde.     See  Rolandseck  in  vol.  11. 

Toinette,  in  Moliere's  Le  Malade 
Imaginaire,  the  best  of  all  that 
author's  serving-maids.  The  em- 
bodiment of  mirth  and  vivacity,  she 
brings  a  breath  of  fresh  air  with  her 
whenever  she  enters  the  sick-room 
and  Ughtens  it  with  a  gleam  of  sun- 
shine. She  recalls  the  Dorine  of 
Tartuffe  and  the  Nicole  of  the 
Bourgeois  Gentlihomme,  but  with  a 
more  exuberant  gayety.  It  is  she 
who  finally  rescues  her  master  Argan 
by  proving  to  him  the  worthlessness 
of  his  wife  Byline.  Toinette  directs 
her  master  to  stretch  himself  out  as 
if  dead  in  his  easy-chair,  and,  when 
Byline  appears,  Toinette  tells  her 
that  he  has  just  passed  away  in  her 
arms. 

"Heaven  be  praised!"  exclaims  the  affec- 
tionate wife.  "Now  I  am  delivered  of  a 
great  burden.  What  use  was  he  when  on 
earth?  A  man  troublesome  to  all  around 
him, — a  dirty,  disgusting  creature,  ever 
blowing  his  nose,  coughing,  or  spitting. 
.  .  .  Since,  fortunately,  no  one  knows 
of  his  death,  let  us  put  him  on  his  bed,  and 
keep  the  fact  concealed  till  I  have  done 
what  I  want.  There  are  papers  and  money 
which  I  must  seize.  .  .  .  Come,  Toi- 
nette, give  me  the  keys." 

The  defunct  man,  however,  starts 
to  his  feet,  and  the  terror-stricken 
wife  flies,  never  to  reappear. 

Tolla  (an  affectionate  diminutive 
of  Vittoria),  heroine  of  About 's 
romance   of   that   name    (1855),   a 


Tom 


360 


Topsy 


social  satire  on  the  habits  of  the 
long  descended  Roman  nobility.  The 
satire  is  softened,  however,  by  an 
engaging  picture  of  the  simple- 
minded  heroine  and  by  realistic 
sketches  of  domestic  life  in  the 
gloomy  interior  of  a  poverty-stricken 
Roman  palace.  The  story  is  foimded 
on  fact.  Vittoria  Savorelli  was  a 
real  person,  who  loved  an  Italian 
prince,  was  betrayed,  and  died.  Her 
letters  were  published  in  1 84 1 .  These 
About  manipulated  into  a  novel, 
changing  her  last  name  to  Feraldi, 
and  calling  her  lover  Prince  Lello 
Coromila-Bereghi. 

Tom,  Uncle,  hero  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  by  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe 
(1852),  which  enjoyed  a  phenomenal 
popularity  in  America  and  in  Europe. 

Uncle  Tom  is  a  paragon  of  virtue.  He  is 
more  than  mortal  in  his  powers  of  endurance, 
in  his  devotion,  in  his  self-denial,  in  his 
Christian  profession  and  practice,  and  in 
his  abhorrence  of  spirituous  liquors.  He 
Is  described  as  a  fine,  powerful  negro,  walk- 
ing through  the  world  with  a  Bible  in  his 
hands  and  virtuous  indignation  on  his  lips, 
both  ready  to  be  called  into  requisition  on 
the  slightest  provocation,  in  season  and  out 
of  season,  at  work  'and  at  play,  by  your 
leave  or  without  it,  in  sorrow  or  in  joy,  for 
the  benefit  of  his  superiors  or  for  the  castl- 
gation  of  his  equals.  He  represents  in  his 
person  the  only  well-authenticated  instance 
we  know,  in  modern  times,  of  that  laudable 
principle  In  virtue  of  which  a  man  presents 
his  left  cheek  to  be  smitten  after  the  first 
has  been  slapped.  The  more  you  "larrup" 
Uncle  Tom  the  more  he  blesses  you;  the 
greater  the  bodily  agony  the  more  intense 
becomes  his  spiritual  delight. — London 
Times  (1852). 

Tommy,    Sentimental,   in   J.   M. 

Barrie's  novel  of  that  name  (1896), 
the  posthumous  son  of  Thomas  San- 
dys. He  begins  life  as  a  street  urchin. 
When  doubly  orphaned  by  the  death 
of  his  mother,  who  had  been  Jean 
Myles  of  Thrums,  he  and  his  sister 
Elspeth  are  cared  for  by  Aaron  Latta, 
an  old  lover  of  his  mother.  They  go 
to  the  Hanky  School  in  Thrums. 
Later  Tommy  studies  for  the  \mi- 
versity,  but  he  allows  his  imagination 
to  nm  riot  in  airy  escapades  and 
self -invented  love  episodes,  fails  to 
pass  his  examination,  and  is  put  to 
work  as  herdboy  on  a  farm.  His 
history  is  continued  in  a  sequel, 
Tommy  and  Grizel, 


Tonson,  Monsieur,  an  imaginary 
character  in  a  farce  of  that  name 
(1821)  by  W.  T.  Moncrief.  Jack 
Ardourly  falls  in  love  with  a  young 
woman  (Adolphine  de  Courcy)  whom 
he  passes  in  the  street,  but,  not  know- 
ing her  name  or  address,  he  engages 
Tom  King  to  ferret  out  both.  Tom 
traces  her  to  the  house  of  a  French 
barber,  a  refugee  named  Morbleu,  and 
sends  people  thither  to  ask  for  Mr. 
Thompson,  hoping  thus  to  obtain  a 
clue.  Poor  Morbleu  is  driven  almost 
wild  assuring  his  many  callers  that 
there  is  no  MonsieurTonson  dwellingin 
his  house.  The  play  is  foimded  upon 
a  prank  actually  played  by  an  actor 
named  Thomas  King,  ephemer^y 
famed  for  his  wit,  and  was  made  the 
subject  of  a  poem  by  John  Taylor 
(1800). 

Toots,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's  Dombey 
and  Son,  a  warm-hearted,  simple- 
minded  young  person,  victim  of  Dr. 
Blimber's  forcing  process,  and  most 
lovable  of  all  specimens  of  arrested 
development.  His  energies  in  schopl- 
time  are  devoted  to  writing  "  long 
letters  to  himself  from  persons  of 
distinction,  addressed  to  P.  Toots, 
Esquire,  Brighton,  Sussex,  and  pre- 
serving them  in  his  desk  with  great 
care."  Equally  innocent  and  infan- 
tile are  his  attempts  to  be  "  fast." 
He  and  Feeder,  B.  A.,  lock  themselves 
up  in  the  latter's  room,  and  cram- 
ming their  noses  with  snuff  to  enjoy 
delightful  agonies  of  sneezing,  drink- 
ing table  beer  at  intervals,  feel  '*  all 
the  glories  of  dissipation."  His 
favorite  companion  is  a  prize-fighter 
(The  Chicken),  his  confidant  is 
Captain  Cuttle,  to  whom  he  con- 
fesses the  most  intimate  details  of 
his  hopeless  passion  for  Florence 
Dombey. 

Topsy,  in  Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  (1852),  a  little  black 
imp  who  loves  lying  for  the  sake  of 
Ijring,  who  is  more  mischievous  than 
a  monkey  and  in  all  respects  as 
ignorant.  She  loses  all  her  individual- 
ity by  being  converted  (with  miracu- 
lous ease)  into  a  commonplace  Chris- 
tian, and  ends  as  missionary  to  a 
station  in  Africa. 


Tormes 


361 


Traddles 


Tonnes,  Lazarillo  de,  hero  of  a 
picaresque  romance  of  that  name 
(1553).  by  Diego  Hurtado  de  Men- 
doza.  Lazarillo  is  a  street  Arab, 
good-humored  and  nimble- witted, 
but  absolutely  conscienceless,  who 
rises  in  the  world  through  chicanery 
and  cimning.  He  learns  his  first 
lessons  in  dissimulation  from  a  ras- 
cally blind  beggar  to  whom  he  acts 
as  guide.  Thence  he  rises  to  greater 
frauds  and  a  wider  range  of  crime 
and  adventure,  in  the  service  suc- 
cessively of  a  priest,  a  country  squire 
starving  on  his  own  pride,  a  retailer 
of  indijJgences,  a  chaplain,  and  an 
alguazil.  Finally,  from  the  most 
disgraceful  motives,  he  settles  down 
as  a  married  man,  and  the  unfinished 
story  leaves  him  town-crier  of  Toledo. 

Mendoza's  novel  laid  the  founda- 
tion for  a  classic  school  of  fiction 
especially  national,  which,  imder  the 
name  of  gusto  picaresco  (the  style  of 
roguery),  is  as  well  known  as  any 
department  of  Spanish  Hterature, 
and  which  was  imitated  and  expanded 
by  Le  Sage  in  Gil  Bias. 

Tory  Foxhunter,  a  character 
sketched  in  several  numbers  of  Addi- 
son's semi- weekly  Freeholder  (17 16), 
ridiculing  with  a  quiet  and  urbane 
humor  the  bigoted  conservatism  of  the 
rural  squirearchy,  who  were  sworn 
enemies  of  the  House  of  Hanover. 

The  Foxhunter  will  not  allow  that 
there  had  been  any  good  weather  in 
England  since  the  Revolution.  jHe 
ridicules  traveUing  abroad,  saying 
"  that  he  scarce  ever  knew  a  traveller 
in  his  life  who  had  not  forsook  his 
principles  and  lost  his  himting-seat." 
He  patronizes  an  innkeeper  whom  he 
describes  as  "  the  best  Church-of- 
England  man  upon  the  road,"  whis- 
pering, in  explanation  to  the  author, 
that,  though  boniface  had  no  time  to 
go  to  church  himself,  he  **  had  headed 
a  mob  at  the  puUing  down  of  two  or 
three  meeting-houses."  He  charac- 
terizes another  of  his  neighbors  as 
"  an  old  fanatical  cur,"  because  "  we 
are  told  in  the  country  that  he  spoke 
twice  in  the  Queen's  time  against 
taking  off  the  duties  upon  French 
claret." 


Touchett,  Ralph,  in  Henry  James's 
international  novel.  The  Portrait  of 
a  Lady  (1881),  the  Enghsh  cousin 
and  the  platonic  lover  of  the  New 
England  girl  Isabel  Light.  An  inva- 
lid, he  dies  happy  in  the  thought  that 
he  has  made  her  happy.  In  order 
that  she  may  not  be  obliged  to  marry 
for  a  support,  he  had  persuaded  his 
father  to  divide  the  inheritance  that 
would  come  to  him  into  two  equal 
parts,  one  of  which  went  to  Isabel. 
It  was  for  this  fortune  that  Isabel  was 
married  by  a  fortime-hunter  whose 
indifference  blasted  her  life. 

Touchstone,  the  clown  in  Shake- 
speare's comedy,  As  You  Like  It. 

He  Is  a  rare  fellow.  He  is  a  mixture  of 
the  ancient  cynic  philosopher  with  the 
modem  buflEoon,  and  turns  folly  into  wit, 
and  wit  into  folly,  just  as  the  fit  takes  him. 
His  courtship  of  Audrey  not  only  throws  a 
degree  of  ridicule  on  the  state  of  wedlock 
itself,  but  he  is  equally  an  enemy  to  the 
prejudices  of  opinion  in  other  respects.  The 
lofty  tone  of  enthusiasm  which  the  Duke 
and  his  companions  in  exile  spread  over 
the  stillness  and  solitude  of  a  country  life 
receives  a  pleasant  shock  from  Touchstone's 
sceptical  determination  of  the  question  in 
his  reply  to  Corin  (iii,  2,  14).  Zimmerman's 
celebrated  work  on  Solitude  discovers  only 
half  the  sense  of  this  passage. — Hazlitt. 

Toussaint  I'Ouverture,  the  negro 
emancipator  of  San  Domingo  from 
French  rule,  is  the  hero  of  an  histori- 
cal novel,  The  Hour  and  the  Man 
(1840),  by  Harriet  Martineau.  In 
the  uprising  of  the  slaves,  August, 
1 79 1,  Toussaint  at  first  remains  loyal 
to  the  whites,  and  even  enters  the 
service  of  the  allies  of  the  French 
king.  His  mind  wavers  when  the 
negro  convention  proclaims  the  eman- 
cipation of  his  race,  and  he  ends  by 
accepting  the  leadership  of  the  blacks. 
From  this  point  the  story  follows  the 
course  of  history  through  his  dramatic 
successes  to  the  tragic  end  of  his 
extraordinary  career. 

Traddles,  Thomas  (better  known 
as  Tommie),  in  Dickens's  David 
Copper  field,  a  fellow-pupil  with  David 
at  Salem  House,  afterward  a  barrister 
and  ultimately  a  judge.  In  his 
school  days  he  was  "  the  merriest  and 
most  miserable  of  all  the  boys."  He 
was  always  being  caned,  but  foimd 
relief  in  drawing  skeletons  all  over 


Traffick 


362 


Triboulet 


his  slate  before  his  eyes  were  dry. 
"  I  used  at  first  to  wonder,"  says 
Copperfield,  "  what  comfort  Traddles 
found  in  drawing  skeletons,  and  for 
some  time  looked  upon  him  as  a  sort 
of  hermit  who  reminded  himself  by 
those  symbols  of  mortality  that 
caning  couldn't  last  for  ever.  But  I 
believe  he  only  did  it  because  they 
were  easy  and  didn't  want  any 
features." 

Traffick,  Sir  Jealous,  in  Mrs. 
Centlivre's  comedy,  The  Busybody 
(1709),  a  wealthy  English  merchant 
who  unpatriotically  imagines  that 
everything  Spanish  is  superior  to  the 
English.  He  is  tricked  by  Charles 
Gripe,  disguised  in  a  Spanish  costume 
as  Don  Diego  Barbinetto,  into  sur- 
rendering the  hand  of  his  daughter 
Isabinda. 

Trafford,  Geoffrey,  hero  of  Mrs. 
Alexander's  novel,  The  Wooing  O'i 
(1873).  An  aristocratic,  cynical, 
witty,  travelled  man  of  the  world, 
who  at  thirty-two  has  exhausted  its 
pleasures,  and  who,  though  "  steady," 
would  "  stick  at  nothing  which  he 
wanted  very  much."  He  is  always  a 
gentleman,  however,  with  infinite 
depths  of  possible  passion  in  his  dark 
eyes,  so  that  all  women  say  instinct- 
ively to  themselves,  "  How  he  could 
love! "  Beloved  by  a  legion  of 
women,  he  never  can  return  their 
affection  until  he  meets  Maggy  Grey. 

Trajan,  hero  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  (1885),  by  H.  F.  Keenan,  a 
young  American  artist  living  in  Paris 
at  the  height  of  the  Second  Empire 
(May,  1870,  to  May,  1871),  and 
more  or  less  affiliated  with  the  men 
who  afterward  were  active  in  the 
scenes  that  followed  Sedan. 

Treheme,  Belinda,  heroine  of  W.  S. 
Gilbert's  comedy.  Engaged,  played 
in  the  original  performance  (1877)  by 
Miss  Marion  Terry. 

Trelawney,  Rose,  heroine  of  a  com- 
edy, Trelawney  of  the  Wells  (1898),  by 
Arthur  W.  Pinero.  An  actress  en- 
gaged to  a  young  English  nobleman, 
she  leaves  the  Sadler's  Wells  com- 
pany to  visit  his  home  and  family. 
Wearying  of  the  frivolities  of  aristo- 
cratic society  she  breaks  her  engage- 


ment and  returns  to  the  freer  life  of 
the  stage.  Thither  her  lover  follows 
and  becomes  an  actor  in  order  to  win 
her. 

Trelooby,  Squire,  hero  of  a  farce  of 
that  name  by  Vanbrugh,  Congreve, 
and  Walsh  (1704),  is  a  squire  who 
comes  from  Cornwall  to  London,  and 
meets  with  substantially  the  same 
adventures  and  misadventures  as 
confounded  that  gentleman  from 
Limoges,  Monsieur  de  Pourceargnac 
(g.r.),  when  he  left  rustic  simplicity 
to  come  to  Paris. 

Tremaine,  hero  of  Tremaine,  or 
the  Man  of  Refinement,  a  novel  by 
Robert  Plumer  Ward,  pubUshed 
anonymously  in  1825,  a  refined  and 
amiable  sceptic  of  thirty-eight,  a 
disbeliever  in  love,  in  friendship,  and 
in  revealed  religion,  has  fled  from 
the  hollow  world  to  bury  himself  in 
his  ancestral  estates,  and  there 
oscillates  between  listless  indolence 
and  ill-regulated  exertion.  He  is  at 
last  redeemed  from  his  various  errors 
through  his  love  for  a  girl  of  eighteen, 
and  the  influence  of  her  reverend 
father,  a  country  clergyman. 

Trent,  Little  Nell,  an  ideal  of  child- 
ish innocence,  sweetness,  and  purity, 
in  Dickens's  novel,  The  Old  Curiosity 
Shop,  grandchild  of  the  owner  of  the 
shop.  The  old  man,  obsessed  with 
the  idea  of  making  her  rich  and 
happy,  tempts  fortune  in  the  gam- 
bling hells,  pawns  everything,  loses 
everything,  and,  having  been  turned 
into  the  streets,  starts  out  on  weary- 
wanderings  with  Little  Nell  as  his 
guide  until  she  dies  of  weariness  and 
privation. 

Triboulet,  the  historical  jester  at 
the  courts  of  Louis  XII  and  Francis  I, 
figures  in  Rabelais's  Gargantua,  and 
was  taken  by  Victor  Hugo  as  the 
hero  of  his  tragedy,  Le  Rot  S'Amuse. 
Hugo's  story  is  sheer  fiction,  or 
rather  an  old  legend  arbitrarily  as- 
signed to  Triboulet.  Francis  I  casts 
lustful  eyes  upon  the  jester's  daughter 
Blanche;  to  save  her  and  wreak  ven- 
geance on  Francis,  Triboulet  con- 
trives a  plot  whereby  she  shall  kill 
her  royal  lover  and  stow  his  dead 
body  into  a  sack  which  Triboulet 


Trilby 


363 


Trotwood 


will  find  and  carry  away.  In  a  terrific 
climax  the  jester,  triumphing  over 
the  dead  body  which  he  believes  to 
be  that  of  his  daughter's  seducer, 
suddenly  hears  the  voice  of  his  light- 
hearted  enemy,  and  finds  that  it  is 
his  own  daughter  whose  death  he  has 
compassed.  Verdi  turned  Hugo's 
tragedy  into  the  opera  Rigoletto 
(1852),  choosing  for  his  jester  an 
Italian  instead  of  a  Frenchman  and 
changing  the  daughter's  name  to 
Gilda.  Tom  Taylor,  in  The  Fool's 
Revenge  (1859),  a  drama  founded  on 
Hugo,  renames  the  jester  and  his 
daughter  Bertuccio  and  Fiordelisa. 

Trilby,  in  Charles  Nodier's  story  of 
that  name  (1822),  founded  on  local 
tradition,  a  male  fairy  who  attached 
himself  to  a  Breton  fisherman,  fell  in 
love  with  his  wife,  and  performed  all 
sorts  of  domestic  services  for  her. 
See  O'Ferrall,  Trilby. 

Trilby  was  a  name  that  had  long  lain 
Perdu  somewhere  at  the  back  of  du  Mau- 
rier's  head.  He  traced  it  to  a  story  by 
Charles  Nodier.  The  name  Trilby  also 
appears  in  a  poem  by  Alfred  de  Musset. 
And  to  this  name  and  to  the  story  of  a 
woman  which  was  once  told  him  du  Mau- 
rier's  Trilby  owed  her  birth.  "From  the 
moment  the  name  occurred  to  me,"  he 
said,  "I  was  struck  with  its  value.  I  at 
once  realized  that  it  was  a  name  of  great 
importance.  I  think  I  must  have  felt  as 
happy  as  Thackeray  did  when  the  title  of 
Vanity  Fair  suggested  itself  to  him. — 
T.  Martin  Wood:  George  du  Maurier, 
p.  92. 

Trim,  Corporal,  in  Sterne's  novel  of 
Tristram  Shandy,  servant  to  Uncle 
Toby. 

Trim,  instead  of  being  the  opposite,  is, 
in  his  notions,  the  duplicate  of  Uncle  Toby. 
Yet,  with  an  identity  of  disposition,  the 
character  of  the  common  soldier  is  nicely 
discriminated  from  that  of  the  officer.  His 
whole  carriage  bears  traces  of  the  drill-yard, 
which  are  want;ingin  the  superior.  Under 
the  name  of  a  servant,  he  is  in  reality  a 
companion;  and  he  is  a  delightful  mixture 
of  familiarity  in  the  essence  and  the  most 
deferential  respect  in  forms.  Of  his  sim- 
plicity and  humanity,  it  is  enough  to  say 
that  he  is  worthy  to  walk  behind  his  master. 
— Elwin. 

Trissotin,  in  Molidre's  comedy,  Las 
Femmes  Savantes,  a  poetaster  and  a 
self-fancied  hel  esprit,  who  feigns  to 
be  in  love  with  Henriette,  although 
she  dislikes  him,  but  gladly  retires 


when  her  father  is  reported  to  be  on 
the  verge  of  bankruptcy.  His  absurd 
quarrel  with  his  rival,  Vadius,  forms 
a  famous  episode  in  the  play.  In 
creating  the  characters  of  the  two 
rivals  MoUere  was  held  to  have  in 
mind  the  Abb  6  Cotin  and  M6nage. 
As  to  the  first  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
It  is  even  said  that  in  MS.  the  name 
appeared  as  Tricotin,  but  was  after- 
wards changed.  The  sonnet  and  mad- 
rigal quoted  in  the  play  are  taken 
literally  from  the  (Euvres  Galantes  of 
the  Abb6  published  in  1663.  The 
Ahh6  Charles  Cotin  (i  604-1 682)  was 
a  member  of  the  French  Academy 
and  a  prolific  writer  in  prose  and 
verse.  He  had  made  some  veiled 
attacks  upon  Molicre,  but  the  latter 
was  less  moved  probably  by  resent- 
ment for  the  individual  than  detesta- 
tion for  his  kind.  He  saw  in  Cotin  the 
embodiment  of  literary  pretentious- 
ness supported  on  a  limited  basis  of 
information. 

Troilus,  son  of  Priam,  king  of  Troy, 
hero  of  Shakespeare's  tragedy^  Troi- 
lus and  Cressida  (1609),  and  of  Chau- 
cer's poem,  Troylus  and  Cressid, 
reproduced  from  Boccaccio.  See  this 
entry  in  vol.  11. 

Chaucer's  poem  was  for  two  centuries 
the  most  popular  poem  in  England.  In  the 
fifteenth  century  a  Scotch  poet,  Henryson, 
wrote  a  continuation  of  it.  Sixteenth  cen- 
tury praises  of  it  abound.  "Chaucer," 
says  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  "undoubtedly  did 
excellently  in  his  Troylus  and  Cressid." 
Lydgate,  in  his  Troy  Book,  when  he  comes 
to  Troilus  ann  Cressida,  at  once  cites 
Chaucer's  poem  as  the  source  of  all  he  has 
to  tell.  Shakespeare  does  not  accept  the 
story  in  the  spirit  in  which  Chaucer  re- 
counts it.  Chaucer's  heart  was  very  soft 
towards  women,  and  he  could  not  harden 
it  enough  to  represent  Cressida  faithfully. 
He  is  alwtiys  yearning  to  excuse  her.  Even 
for  what  he  does  say  he  attempts  reparation 
in  the  Legend  of  Good  Women.  With  all  her 
faults  he  loved  her  still,  and  would  fain 
have  been  blind  to  her  terrible  treason. 

Trotwood,  Betsy  {i.e.,  Elizabeth), 

in  Dickens's  David  Copperfield,  a 
great-aunt  of  the  hero,  who  kindly 
welcomes  him  when  he  runs  away 
from  his  cruel  stepfather  Murdstone. 
She  had  been  married  to  a  husband 
younger  than  herself, — "  who  was 
very  handsome  except  in  the  sense 
of  the  homely  adage,  handsome  is 


Troy 


364 


Tulliver 


that  handsome  does," — and,  having 
obtained  a  separation,  resumed  her 
maiden  name,  bought  a  cottage  on 
the  sea-coast,  and  there  established 
herself  as  a  single  woman  with  one 
servant.  She  is  supposed  to  have 
been  drawn  from  Miss  Mary  Strong, 
who  occupied  a  double-fronted  cot- 
tage on  the  sea-front  at  Broadstairs, 
now  named  Dickens  House. 
Copperfield  thus  describes  her: 

Mv  aunt  was  a  tall,  hard-featured  lady, 
but  by  no  means  ill-looking.  There  was 
Inflexibility  in  her  face,  in  her  voice,  in  her 
gait  and  carriage,  but  her  features  were 
rather  handsome  than  otherwise,  though 
unbending  and  austere. 

Troy,  Sergeant  Francis,  in  Thomas 
Hardy's  novel.  Far  from  the  Madding 
Crowd  (1874),  the  reputed  son  of  a 
Weatherby  physician,  but  plausibly 
suspected  to  be  the  illegitimate  issue 
of  the  late  Lord  Severn.  Articled  to 
an  attorney,  he  enlisted  in  the 
dragoons,  became  particularly  expert 
in  fencing  and  all  soldierly  exercises, 
and,  returning  to  Weatherby,  mar- 
ried Bathseba  Everdene  (g.t».).  His 
evil  doings  and  their  results  form  the 
staple  of  the  plot. 

Tnilliber,  Parson,  in  Fielding's 
novel.  The  Adventures  of  Joseph 
Andrews  (1742),  a  coarse,  brutal, 
ignorant,  and  slothful  clergyman, 
who  "  had  a  stateliness  in  his  gait 
when  he  walked,  not  imlike  that  of  a 
goose,  only  he  stalked  slower."  In 
mind  and  manners  he  forms  a  striking 
contrast  to  the  amiable,  simple,  and 
devout  Parson  Adams  in  the  same 
novel. 

Trunnion,  Commodore  Hawser,  in 
Smollett's  Adventures  of  Peregrine 
Pickle,  an  eccentric  naval  veteran, 
retired  from  service  with  honorable 
scars,  but  retaining  his  radical  habits. 
He  keeps  garrison  in  his  house,  which 
is  defended  by  a  ditch  crossed  by  a 
drawbridge,  and  he  obliges  his  ser- 
vants to  sleep  in  hammocks  and  take 
turns  on  watch.    See  Wemmick. 

Sir  Walter  thought  that  Smollefs  sailors 
in  Pickle  "  border  on  caricature."  No  doubt 
they  do:  the  eccentricities  of  Hawser  Trun- 
nion, Esq.,  are  exaggerated,  and  Pipes  is 
less  subdued  than  Rattlin,  though  always 


delightful.  But  Trunnion  absolutely  makes 
one  laugh  aloud:  whether  he  is  criticising 
the  sister  of  Mr.  Gamaliel  Pickle  in  that 
gentleman's  presence  at  a  pothouse;  or 
riding  to  the  altar  with  his  squadron  of 
sailors  tacking  in  an  unfavorable  gale;  or  be- 
ing ran  away  into  a  pack  of  hounds,  and 
clearing  a  hollow  road  over  a  wagoner,  who 
views  him  with  "unspeakable  terror  and 
amazement."  Mr.  Winkle  as  an  equestrian 
is  not  more  entirely  acceptable  to  the  mind 
than  Trunnion.  We  may  speak  of  "carica- 
ture," but  if  an  author  can  make  us  sob  with 
laughter,  to  criticise  him  solemnly  is  ungrate- 
ful.— Andrew  Lang,  Adventures  among 
Books,  p.  200. 

Tubal,  in  Shakespeare's  comedy, 
The  Merchant  of  Venice,  a  Jew  friend 
of  Shylock,  appearing  only  in  Act  iii, 
where  he  alternately  exasperates 
Shylock  with  reports  of  his  daughter's 
extravagance  and  consoles  him  with 
news  of  Antonio's  misfortunes. 

Tuggs,  Simon  (self-styled  Cymon), 
in  Dickens's  The  Tuggs  at  Ramsgate, 
in  Sketches  by  Boz,  a  book-keeper  in 
his  father's  grocery,  who,  when  the 
family  comes  into  sudden  wealth, 
apes  aristocratic  airs  and  is  neatly 
taken  in  and  swindled  by  Captain 
Waters  and  his  wife. 

TuUiver,  Maggie,  heroine  of  George 
Eliot's  novel,  The  Mill  on  the  Floss 
(i860).  With  a  warm  and  yearning 
heart,  overflowing  affection,  a  pas- 
sionate desire  to  love  and  to  be  loved, 
she  is  tortured  even  in  childhood  by 
the  sense  of  her  own  shortcomings, 
the  pangs  of  a  too  tender  conscience. 
As  she  advances  towards  maturity 
the  burden  and  the  mystery  of  exist- 
ence become  more  and  more  inexplica- 
ble to  her,  she  gets  entangled  among 
the  quicksands,  and,  though  she 
draws  back  before  taking  the  fatal 
leap  over  a  moral  precipice,  it  is  with 
such  loss  of  dignity  and  self-esteem 
that  she  welcomes  death  when  it 
comes  through  an  accident.  The 
story  is  largely  autobiographical. 
Maggie's  childish  relations  with  her 
brother  Tom  are  evidently  a  reminis- 
cence of  the  early  life  of  the  author 
and  her  brother  Isaac — to  whom  the 
verses.  Brother  and  Sister,  are  ad- 
dressed. The  alienation  of  Maggie 
from  her  friends  and  kindred  by  a 
single  false  step  has  also  a  parallel 
in  George  Eliot's  life,  her  heterodox 


TulUTer 


865 


Twist 


opinions,  and  especially  her  relations 
with  Lewes,  whose  name  she  assumed 
without  legal  sanction,  having  severed 
her  from  her  family  and  early  asso- 
ciates. 

The  finest  thing  in  that  admirable  novel 
has  always  been,  to  our  taste,  not  its  por- 
trayal of  the  young  girl's  love  struggles  as 
regards  her  lover,  but  those  as  regards  her 
brother.  The  former  are  fiction, — skilful 
fiction;  but  the  latter  are  warm  reality,  and 
the  merit  of  the  verses  is  that  they  are  col- 
ored from  the  same  source. — Henry  James: 
Views  and  Reviews,  p.  142. 

Tulliver,  Tom,  in  George  Eliot's 
novel.  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,  the 
brother  of  Maggie  and  her  favorite 
companion  in  youth.  Conceited  and 
hard-headed,  though  not  hard- 
hearted, he  is  utterly  unable  to 
understand  her  wayward  moods  or 
the  lofty  ideals  that  underlie  them. 
As  he  grows  up  the  estrangement 
between  them  grows  wider. 

Poor  erratic  Maggie  is  worth  a  hundred 
of  her  positive  brother,  and  yet  on  the  very 
threshold  of  life  she  is  compelled  to  accept 
him  as  her  master.  He  falls  naturally  into 
the  man's  privilege  of  always  being  in  the 
right. — Henry  James:  Views  and  Reviews, 
p.  29. 

The  character  of  Tom  is  far  from  being 
a  noble  one,  but  it  acquires  a  certain  dignity 
from  its  patience,  resoluteness,  and  sense 
of  duty. — Leslie  Stephen:    George  Eliot. 

Tully-Veolan,  in  Scott's  Waverley, 
perhaps  the  most  celebrated  manor- 
house  in  fiction.  Scott  says  he  had 
no  particular  domicile  in  view.  The 
peculiarities  of  the  place  were  com- 
mon to  many  old  Scotch  seats.  But 
Traquair,  in  Peeblesshire,  was  prob- 
ably in  his  mind. 

Scott's  intimate  knowledge  of  the  place, 
his  frequent  visits  to  it,  and  the  impression 
which  such  a  history-haunted  pile  was  likely 
to  make  on  his  imagination,  suggest  the 
tolerable  certainty  of  its  having  at  least 
formed  the  study  for  the  more  finished  and 
bolder-featured  picture.  The  avenue  in  the 
novel  was  undoubtedly  modelled  from  the 
avenue  at  Traquair,  bating  an  archway, 
which  Traquair  never  had.  The  twin  Bears, 
masses  of  upright  stone  battered  by  the 
blasts  of  many  winters,  still  frown  on  the 
highway. — W.  S.  Crockett:  The  Scott 
Originals. 

TuTcaret,  hero  and  title  of  a  politi- 
cal comedy  by  Lesage  (1708).  Tur- 
caret  is  a  burlesque  of  the  financier 


Samuel  Bernard,  who  had  been  called 
in  by  the  Controller,  General  Des- 
marest,  to  regulate  the  finances  of 
France.  This  young  man,  son  of  a 
member  of  the  Academy  of  Painters, 
raised  himself  to  the  highest  position 
in  point  of  wealth  and  social  dignity, 
and  married  his  daughter  to  the  son 
of  President  Mol^.  His  partisans 
assert  that  his  integrity  was  equal  to 
his  capacity,  and  that,  instead  of 
being  the  usurer  and  libertine  that 
Lesage  depicts  him  in  Turcaret,  he 
devoted  all  his  energies  to  the  service 
of  the  state  and  died  almost  penniless, 
it  being  discovered  after  his  death 
that  he  had  lent  no  less  than  ten 
million  francs  to  various  persons, 
from  whom  he  had  never  either  asked 
or  received  a  penny  in  return. 

Turveydrop,  Mr.,  in  Dickens's 
novel.  Bleak  House,  a  dancing-master 
and  a  model  of  deportment.  His 
imposing  outer  appearance  is  inflated 
from  within  by  nothing  more  august 
than  the  wind  of  his  own  self-esteem. 
Yet  he  fools  the  world  into  acceptance 
of  his  fancied  superiority.  He  lived 
on  the  earnings  of  his  wife,  a  meek 
little  dancing-mistress,  until  she  died, 
when  the  burden  of  supporting  him 
was  transferred  to  his  son  Prince 
Turveydrop,  so  named  in  honor  of 
the  Prince  Regent,  whom  the  elder 
Turveydrop  adored  on  account  of  his 
deportment. 

Twining,  Claire,  heroine  of  Edgar 
Fawcett's  novel,  An  Ambitious 
Woman  (1883).  _  She  comes  from  a 
good  old  English  family  on  her 
father's  side,  but  her  mother  was  an 
American  plebeian  and  vulgarian  who 
married  him  for  his  money.  After 
the_  father's  death  Claire  develops 
social  ambitions.  A  wealthy  school- 
girl friend  is  her  first  aid  in  the 
struggle  for  social  recognition,  a  well- 
bom  husband  is  her  second. 

Twist,  Oliver,  hero  of  Dickens's 
novel  of  that  name  (1837),  a  nameless 
orphan  bom  and  brought  up  in  a 
workhouse,  whither  his  mother  had 
come  to  die,  without  revealing  either 
her  name  or  his.  He  startles  all 
bumbledom  by  asking  for  more  gruel, 
runs    away    to    London,    where    he 


Tybalt  2 

consorts  in  all  innocence  with  thieves, 
fences,  and  prostitutes,  is  rescued  and 
befriended  by  the  Maylie  family,  into 
whose  house  he  had  been  thrust  for 
burglarious  purposes,  and  finally  dis- 
covers an  aunt  in  Miss  Rose  Maylie, 
an  adopted  daughter  of  the  house, 
whose  real  name,  like  his  own,  is 
Fleming. 

Tybalt,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy, 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  a  cousin  of  Juliet. 
Mercutio  calls  him  "  prince  or  king 
of  cats  "  (Act  ii,  4),  an  allusion  to 
the  fact  that  Tybalt,  or  Tybert,  is  the 
name  of  the  cat  in  Reynard  the  Fox. 
Fiery  and  quarrelsome,  he  forces  a 
quarrel  with  Romeo  and  his  friends, 
slays  Mercutio,  and  is  himself  slain 
by  Romeo  (iii,  i). 


5  Ulysses 

Tyrrell,  Sir  James  (died  1502),  the 
supposed  murderer  of  the  princes  in 
the  Tower,  appears  in  that  capacity 
in  Shakespeare's  play,  Richard  III 
(Act  iv,  3).  He  was  beheaded  in 
1502  as  a  co-conspirator  with  the  Earl 
of  Suffolk,  and  is  said  to  have  con- 
fessed the  murder  before  his  death. 
The  substance  of  this  confession 
(though  the  text  has  not  been  pre- 
served) forms  the  basis  of  the  story 
as  we  have  it  in  The  History  of  King 
Richard  III  attributed  to  Sir  Thomas 
More.  The  author  writes  that  Sir 
James  was  "  a  brave,  handsome  man, 
who  deserved  a  better  master,  and 
would  have  inherited  the  esteem  of 
all  men,  had  his  virtues  been  as  great 
as  his  valor." 


Udolpho,  in  Anne  Radcliffe's  ro- 
mance. The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho 
(1794),  a  mediaeval  castle  in  the 
Apennines,  where  during  the  seven- 
teenth century  all  sorts  of  dark  deal- 
ings with  the  powers  of  evil  are  fabled 
to  have  occurred.  Emily  St.  Aubyn, 
an  English  girl,  is  the  chief  victim 
of  these  apparently  supernatural 
agencies.  The  Chevalier  Valencourt, 
her  noble  and  courageous  lover,  finally 
lays  the  spell,  or,  rather,  exposes  the 
fact  that  the  "  mysteries "  are  all 
capable  of  a  perfectly  natural  expla- 
nation. 

Ugly  Duckling,  in  Andersen's  Fairy 
Tales,  a  cygnet  hatched  out  among  a 
brood  of  ducklings:  mistaken  for  an 
uncouth  and  awkward  member  of  the 
same  species,  and  persecuted  as  such 
until  his  swanhood  is  revealed.  It  is 
a  poetical  presentation  of  Andersen's 
own  tearful  youth  and  finally  tritmi- 
phant  maturity.  Bismarck  read  into 
it  an  allegory  of  his  own  early  career. 
"  My  mother  always  thought  me  an 
Ugly  Duckling,"  he  said. 

Ulalume,  in  Poe's  mystic  ballad  of 
that  name  (1849),  is  plausibly  inter- 
preted as  a  reference  to  the  poet's 
wife,  Virginia  Clemm,  whom  he  had 
buried  October,  1848.  The  hint  of  a 
new   love   had   almost   effaced   her 


image,  when  Psyche — his  soul — starts 
up  in  alarm  to  remind  him  that  just  a 
year  ago  he  had  buried  Ulalume. 
With  the  cry  that  a  demon  has  been 
tempting  him,  he  dismisses  all 
thoughts  of  a  successor. 

UlUn's  Daughter,  Lord,  heroine  of 
a  ballad  of  that  name  (1803),  by 
Thomas  Campbell.  She  eloped  with 
the  chief  of  Ulva's  isle;  the  fugitives 
embarked  in  a  row-boat,  which  cap- 
sized (for  a  storm  had  arisen),  and 
Lord  Ullin  from  the  shore  witnessed 
the  catastrophe: 

The  waters  wild  rolled  o'er  his  child. 
And  he  was  left  lamenting. 

Ulysses,  in  Shakespeare's  Troilus 
and  Cressida,  the  general  of  the  Greek 
forces  before  Troy,  is  a  classic  outline 
filled  in  with  Elizabethan  feeling. 
A  foil  to  Troilus,  he  represents  the 
much-experienced  man  of  the  world, 
possessed  of  its  highest  and  broadest 
wisdom,  which  yet  always  remains 
worldly  wisdom  and  never  rises  into 
the  spiritual  contemplation  of  a 
Prospero.  He  sees  all  the  unworthi- 
ness  of  human  life,  but  will  use  it 
for  high  worldly  ends;  the  spirit  of 
irreverence  and  insubordination  in 
the  camp  he  would  restrain  by  the 
politic  machinery  of  what  he  calls 


Ulysses 


367 


Uncas 


"  degree  "  (i,  iii,  75).  With  right 
insight  Richard  Grant  White  and 
other  critics  have  seen  in  this  char- 
acter a  portrait  of  Shakespeare  him- 
self in  his  self-contained  maturity, 
as  Romeo  represents  himself  in  his 
passionate  boyhood  and  Hamlet  in 
his  self-questioning  and  self-torturing 
youth,  while  Prospero  we  may 
imagine  is  a  forecast  of  his  old  age. 
See  Odysseus  in  vol.  11. 

Shakespeare,  acting  upon  a  mere  hint, 
filling  up  a  mere  traditionary  outline,  drew 
a  man  of  mature  years,  of  wide  observation, 
of  profoundest  cogitative  power,  one  who 
knew  all  the  weakness  and  all  the  wiles  of 
human  nature,  and  who  yet  remained  with 
blood  unbittered  and  with  soul  unsoured — 
a  man  who  saw  through  all  shams,  and 
fathomed  all  motives,  and  who  yet  was  not 
scornful  of  his  kind,  not  misanthropic, 
hardly  cynical  except  in  passing  moods;  and 
what  other  man  was  this  than  Shakespeare 
himself?  What  had  he  to  do  when  he  had 
passed  forty  years  but  to  utter  his  own 
thoughts  when  he  would  find  words  for  the 
lips  of  Ulysses? — R.  G.  White,  article  On 
Reading  Shakespeare,  in  Galaxy,  February, 
1877. 

Ulysses,  poem  by  Tennyson,  in 
which  is  voiced  the  eager  longing  of 
the  heroic  spirit  for  action  and  adven- 
ture, and  its  contempt  for  mere  sleek 
comfort  and  inglorious  ease.  The 
immediate  source  of  the  poem  is  a 
passage  in  Dante's  Inferno,  xxvi,  90. 
Ulysses  is  speaking: 

Neither  fondness  for  my  son,  nor  rever- 
ence for  my  aged  sire,  nor  the  due  love  which 
ought  to  have  gladdened  Penelope,  could 
conquer  in  me  the  ardor  which  I  had  to 
become  experienced  in  the  world,  and  in 
human  vice  and  worth.  I  put  out  into  the 
deep  open  sea  with  \5ut  one  ship,  and  with 
that  small  company  which  had  not  deserted 
me.  ...  I  and  my  companions  were 
old  and  tardy  when  we  came  to  that  narrow 
pass  where  Hercules  assigned  his  landmarks. 
"O  brothers,"  I  said,  "who  through  a  hun- 
dred thousand  dangers  have  reached  the 
West,  deny  not  to  this  the  brief  vigil  of 
your  senses  that  remain,  experience  of  the 
unpeopled  world  beyond  the  sun.  Consider 
your  origin,  ye  were  not  formed  to  live  like 
brutes,  but  to  follow  virtue  and  knowledge." 
Night  already  saw  the  other  pole 
with  all  its  stars,  and  ours  so  low  that  it 
rose  not  from  the  ocean  floor. 

Una,  in  Spenser's  v  i^aene  Queene, 
the  type  of  unity  and  purity  of  faith, 
as  Duessa  is  of  duplicity  and  impurity. 
Hence  Una  means  Protestantism  and 
Duessa  "  Papacy,"  or,  more  specifi- 


cally, Una  represents  Queen  Eliza- 
beth, and  Duessa  a  combination  of 
Mary  Tudor  and  Mary  Stuart  (see 
Duessa).  She  is  the  heroine  of 
Canto  I.  Riding  on  a  white  horse 
and  leading  a  white  lamb  she  appears 
at  the  Court  of  Gloriana  praying  for 
a  champion  who  will  slay  a  dragon 
that  holds  her  parents  prisoners.  The 
task  is  confided  to  the  Red  Cross 
Knight,  but  Una  and  he  are  separated 
through  the  wiles  of  Archimago.  She 
sets  out  alone,  is  befriended  by  a  lion 
who  becomes  her  constant  attendant, 
and  finally  rejoins  the  Red  Cross 
Knight.  His  task  accomplished,  he  is 
badly  wounded.  She  nurses  him  back 
to  health  and  is  joined  to  him  in  Eden. 

Two  shall  be  named  pre-eminently  dear: — 
The  gentle  Lady  married  to  the  Moor, 
And    heavenly    Una    with    her    milk-white 
Lamb. 

Wordsworth:    Personal  Talk. 

Una  Is  one  of  the  noblest  contributions 
which  poetry,  whether  of  ancient  or  of 
modern  times,  has  made  to  its  great  picture- 
gallery  of  characters. — Aubrey  de  Verb: 
Essays,  Chiefly  on  Poetry,  1887. 

Uncas,  a  yoimg  Indian  chief,  titular 
hero  of  Cooper's  novel,  The  Last  of 
the  Mohicans  (1826).  He  is  the  son 
of  Chingachgook,  and  dies  in  the 
effort  to  rescue  Cora  Mimro  from  the 
cruel  Magua. 

We  accept  with  acquiescence,  nay,  with 
admiration,  such  characters  as  Magua, 
Chingachgook,  Susquesus,  Tamenund,  and 
Canonchet;  but  when  we  come  to  Uncas, 
in  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  we  pause 
and  shake  our  heads  with  incredulous  doubt. 
That  a  young  Indian  chief  should  fall  in 
love  with  a  handsome  quadroon  like  Cora 
Munro — for  she  was  neither  more  nor  less 
than  that — is  natural  enough;  but  that  he 
should  manifest  his  passion  with  such 
delicacy  and  refinement  is  impossible.  We 
include  under  one  and  the  same  name  all  the 
aflBnities  and  attractions  of  sex,  but  the 
appetite  of  the  savage  differs  from  the  love 
of  the  educated  and  civilized  man  as  much 
as  charcoal  differs  from  the  diamond.  The 
sentiment  of  love,  as  distinguished  from  the 
passion,  is  one  of  the  last  and  best  results 
of  Christianity  and  civilization:  in  no  one 
thing  does  savage  life  differ  from  civilized 
more  than  in  the  relations  between  man  and 
woman,  and  in  the  affections  that  unite 
them.  Uncas  is  a  graceful  and  beautiful 
image;  but  he  is  no  Indian. — Atlantic 
Monthly,  January,  1863. 

Have  we  not  had  enough  of  these  red 
Indians — nay,  rather  too  much  of  them — 
since  the  days  when  Penimore  Cooper,  with 


Undine 


Valjean 


his  pleasant  dream  of  the  Last  of  the 
Mohicans,  deluded  our  young  fancies  into 
believing  that  the  conquering  white  race 
had  destroyed  a  transatlantic  Arcadia  in 
which  the  quiet  enjoyment  of  Theocritus's 
shepherds  was  combined  with  the  valor  of 
Homer's  heroes. — Saturday  Review,  Novem- 
ber 10,  1855. 

Undine,  heroine  of  a  fairy  romance 
of  that  name  (1807),  by  De  la  Motte 
Fouqu6, — a  waternymph  substituted 
as  a  changeling  for  a  human  infant 
and  brought  up  by  the  unsuspecting 
family.  Her  putative  father  is  a 
fisherman  living  on  a  peninsula  near 
an  enchanted  forest.  Here  she  is 
wooed  by  Sir  Hulbrand.  By  her 
marriage  she  received  a  soul.  When 
subsequently  the  knight  fell  in  love 
with  Bertalda,  a  mortal  maiden 
(who  turns  out  to  be  the  fisherman's 
real  daughter),  Undine  was  snatched 
away  from  him  by  her  kinsfolk  imder 
the  sea.  Hulbrand  marries  Bertalda. 
On  the  wedding  day  she  calls  for  a 
drink  from  the  well  which  Undine  had 
covered  over  to  save  Hulbrand  from 
the  wrath  of  the  water  nymphs. 
Then  Undine  herself  is  forced  to  rise 
with  the  upheaving  waters,  glide  into 
Hulbrand's  chamber  and  kiss  him  to 
death.    Around  his  grave  there  bub- 


bled a  tiny  stream.  It  was  Undine 
herself,  who  faithful  in  death  as  she 
had  been  loyal  in  life,  found  this  op- 
portunity to  embrace  her  knight 
forever. 

Usher,  Roderick,  hero  of  a  short 
story.  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher, 
by  E.  A.  Poe,  included  in  volume 
Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Arabesque 
(1840).  Roderick  and  his  twin  sister, 
the  lady  Madeline,  were  the  last 
scions  of  an  ill-fated  family.  He 
himself  is  a  prey  to  melancholy  and 
morbid  fears.  His  sister  dies,  ap- 
parently, and  is  buried.  He  soon 
realizes  that  she  has  been  buried 
alive,  but  has  no  strength  to  go  to  her 
assistance,  and  betrays  only  a  horri- 
fied acquiescence  when  the  en- 
shrouded figure  of  the  lady  Madeline, 
bleeding  from  her  efforts  at  self-re-  » 
lease,  appears  at  the  door  of  his  room. 
"  For  a  moment  she  remained  trem- 
bling and  reeling  to  and  fro  upon  the 
threshold — then  with  a  low  moaning 
cry,  fell  heavily  inward  upon  the  per- 
son of  her  brother,  and  in  her  violent 
and  now  final  death  agonies,  bore  him 
to  the  floor  a  corpse,  and  a  victim  to 
the  terrors  he  had  anticipated. 


Valentine,  in  Shakespeare's  Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona  (1595),  one  of 
the  titular  gentlemen,  the  other  being 
Protheus.  Valentine  wooed  and 
married  Silvia,  daughter  of  the  Duke 
of  Milan,  despite  the  rivalry  of 
Thurio,  and  Protheus  married  Julia. 

Valentine,  in  Congreve's  Love  for 
Love.    See  Legend,  Valentine. 

Valentine,  in  Goethe's  Faust  (1798), 
the  brother  of  Margaret.  Maddened 
at  her  seduction  by  Faust,  he  attacks 
the  latter  during  a  serenade  and  is 
slain  by  Mephistopheles. 

Valerius,  titular  hero  of  a  novel 
(182 1 ),  by  J.  G.  Lockhart.  The  son 
of  a  Roman  commander  in  Britain, 
he  is  summoned  to  Rome  after  his 
father's  death  to  take  possession  of 
the  estates  to  which  he  has  succeeded. 
He  meets  a  Christian  maiden,  Atha- 
nasia,  who  converts  him  and  returns 


with  him  to  Britain  as  his  bride.  The 
time  is  laid  in  the  reign  of  Emperor 
Trojan  and  the  persecution  of  the 
Christians  forms  a  part  of  the  historic 
background. 

Valjean,  Jean,  in  Victor  Hugo's  Les 
Miserables,  Part  i  (1862),  a  convict 
who  goes  through  a  complete  moral 
renovation.  First  we  have  the  gradual 
declension  of  the  innocent  son  of  toil 
into  the  depraved  and  hardened  out- 
cast. The  saintly  charity  of  Bishop 
Myriel  stirs  his  deadened  conscience 
and  awakens  him  to  the  first  sense 
of  shame.  Nevertheless,  the  force  of 
habit  is  still  strong.  The  conversion 
is  premature.  Jean  cannot  resist  the 
temptation  of  making  off  with  the 
episcopal  plate.  When  captured  and 
brought  back,  he  is  released  by  the 
bishop,  who  quietly  observes  that  he 
had  forgotten  the  candlesticks.    The 


Valley  of  the  Shadow 


Vanessa 


convict  is  deeply  moved.  Not,  how- 
ever, until  his  evil  nature  has  made 
one  expiring  effort  in  robbing  a  poor 
little  Savoyard  of  a  five-franc  piece 
do  Monseigneur's  words  and  conduct 
bear  their  full  fruit.  The  piteous 
grief  of  the  child  shocks  the  man  into 
full  recognition  of  his  wickedness  and 
degradation.  The  crisis  is  over  and 
he  is  reclaimed  to  virtue.  He  becomes 
a  wealthy  manufacturer,  known  to 
the  world  as  M.  Madeleine,  Mayor  of 
N.  sur  N.,  and,  best  of  all,  the  Elisha 
upon  whom  falls  the  mantle  of  Mon- 
seigneur  Myriel  when  that  good  man 
is  gathered  to  his  fathers.  "  Justice  " 
ferrets  him  out  in  his  disguise,  and 
once  more  he  becomes  an  outlaw  but 
not  an  outcast. 

Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death,  in 
Btmyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress^  Part  I, 
(1678),  the  valley  through  which 
Christian  had  to  pass  after  his  tri- 
umph over  Apollyon  in  the  Valley  of 
Humiliation.  It  is  described  in  the 
language  of  Jeremiah  ii,  6,  as  a 
"  wilderness,  a  land  of  deserts  and  of 
pits,  a  land  of  drouth  and  of  the 
shadow  of  death,  a  land  that  no  man 
passeth  through,  and  where  no  man 
dwelt."  Bunyan  adds  that  the  valley 
was  as  dark  as  pitch;  that  to  the 
right  was  a  deep  ditch,  to  the  left  a 
quagmire:  that  it  ran  past  the  very 
mouth  of  hell,  and  that  it  was  infested 
by  hobgoblins,  satyrs  and  dragons.  , 

Though  I  walk  through  the  valley  of 
the  shadow  of  death,  I  will  fear  no  evil: 
for  Thou  art  with  me;  Thy  rod  and  Thy 
staff  they  comfort  me. — Psalms  xziii,  4. 

Van  Bibber,  the  central  figure  in  a 
volimie  of  short  stories.  Van  Bibber 
and  Others  (1890),  by  Richard  Hard- 
ing Davis.  A  yoimg  New  York  club- 
man, moving  by  birthright  among  the 
so-called  Four  Hundred,  he  yet  has  a 
fondness  for  bohemian  adventures. 

Vane,  Graham,  in  Bulwer-Lytton's 
novel,  The  Parisians,  a  typical  young 
Englishman,  evidently  modelled  after 
the  author  himself  in  early  manhood, 
who  stands  serene  amid  the  restless 
whirl  around  him, — in  dramatic  con- 
trast with  the  priests,  atheists,  legiti- 
mists, Orleanists,  milUonaire  finan- 


ciers of  the  Chauss^e  d'Antin,  and 
the  fierce  Socialists  of  Belleville. 

Vane,  Lady  Isabel,  heroine  of  the 
novel.  East  Lynne  (1861),  by  Mrs. 
Henry  Wood,  and  of  its  nimierous 
dramatizations  by  John  Oxenford,  J. 
C.  Chute,  T.  A.  Palmer,  and  others, 
which  have  brought  fame  and  fortime 
to  English  and  American  actresses 
taking  the  part  of  Lady  Isabel.  East 
Lynne  is  the  name  of  the  ancestral 
home  which  Isabel's  bankrupt  fatheris 
compelled  to  sell  just  before  his  death. 
It  is  purchased  by  Archibald  Carlyle, 
who  marries  the  heroine.  A  rejected 
suitor,  Francis  Leveson,  foully  slan- 
ders Carlyle.  Isabel,  believing  he  is 
untrue  to  her,  elopes  with  Leveson; 
but,  soon  repenting,  returns,  disguised 
and  unrecognized,  to  her  own  home, 
as  governess  to  her  own  children  and 
to  those  of  Carlyle's  second  marriage, 
for  he  has  believed  her  dead.  In  the 
end  Carlyle's  character  is  vindicated, 
Leveson  is  shown  to  be  a  scoimdrel, 
and  Isabel  dies  forgiving  and  for- 
given. 

Vanessa,  a  poetical  name  given  by 
Dean  Swift  to  Esther  VaiSiomrigh 
( 1 690-1 723),  a  yoimg  woman,  twenty- 
five  years  his  jimior,  who  had  fallen 
in  love  with  him  and  had  gone  so  far 
as  to  propose  marriage.  How  Swift 
received  the  declaration  is  told  in  his 
poem  Cadenus  and  Vanessa.  Cade- 
nus  is  an  obvious  anagram  of  Decanus, 
Latin  for  Dean.  Vanessa  is  more 
cunningly  compounded  of  Van,  the 
first  syllable  of  Vanhomrigh,  and 
Essa,  diminutive  of  Esther.  See 
Stella. 

The  loves  of  Cadenus  and  Vanessa  you 
may  peruse  in  Cadenus 's  own  poem  on  the 
subject,  and  in  poor  Vanessa's  vehement 
expostulatory  verses  and  letters  to  him; 
she  adores  him,  implores  him,  admires  him, 
thinks  him  something  god-like,  and  only 
prays  to  be  admitted  to  lie  at  his  feet.  As 
they  are  bringing  him  home  from  church, 
those  divine  feet  of  Dr.  Swift's  are  found 
pretty  often  in  Vanessa's  parlor.  He  likes 
to  be  admired  and  adored.  He  finds  Miss 
Vanhomrigh  to  be  a  woman  of  great  taste 
and  spirit,  and  beauty  and  wit,  and  a  for- 
tune too.  He  sees  her  every  day;  he  does 
not  tell  Stella  about  the  business:  until 
the  impetuous  Vanessa  becomes  too  fond 
of  him,  until  the  doctor  Is  quite  frightened 
by  the  young  woman's  ardour  and  con- 
founded by  her  warmth.     He  wanted  to 


Vanity  Fair 


370 


Varden 


marry  neither  of  them — that  I  believe  was 
the  truth;  but  if  he  had  not  married  Stella, 
Vanessa  would  have  had  him  in  spite  of 
himself.  When  he  went  back  to  Ireland, 
his  Ariadne,  not  content  to  remain  in  her 
Isle,  pursued  the  fugitive  dean.     In  vain  he 

Protested,  he  vowed,  he  soothed,  and 
uUied;  the  news  of  the  dean's  marriage 
with  Stella  at  last  came  to  her,  and  it  killed 
her — she  died  of  that  passion. — Thackeray: 
English  Humorists. 

Vanity  Fair,  in  Bunyan's  Pilgrim* s 
Progress^  Part  i,  a  fair  so  called 
because  it  is  held  in  a  town  that  **  is 
lighter  than  vanity,  and  also  because 
all  that  is  there  sold  or  that  cometh 
thither  is  vanity."  Bunyan  makes 
an  explanatory  reference  to  Psalm 
Ixii,  9,  where  men  of  high  and  low 
degree  are  spoken  of  as  "  Hghter  than 
vanity."  He  explains  that  almost 
5000  years  ago  Beelzebub,  Apollyon, 
and  Legion,  noting  that  the  path  to 
the  Celestial  City  ran  through  this 
spot,  contrived  here  to  set  up  a  fair. 
All  such  merchandise  are  sold  as 
"  houses,  lands,  trades,  places,  honors, 
preferments,  titles,  countries,  king- 
doms, lusts,  pleasures,  and  dehghts 
of  all  sorts,  as  harlots,  wives,  hus- 
bands, children,  lives,  blood,  bodies, 
souls,  silver,  gold,  pearls,  precious 
stones,  and  what  not."  Christian 
and  Faithful,  when  they  reached  the 
city,  denounced  the  fair  and  told  the 
people  there  were  things  in  the  world 
of  more  consequence  than  money  and 
pleasure.  In  their  turn  they  were 
denoimced  as  Bedlamites,  were  ar- 
rested, beaten,  and  put  into  a  cage. 
Next  day  they  were  taken  before 
Justice  Hategood,  and  Faithful  was 
condemned  to  be  burned  at  the 
stake. 

Vanna,  Monna,  titular  heroine  of  a 
drama  (1902),  by  Maurice  Maeter- 
linck and  of  an  opera  founded  thereon 
by  Fevrier.  The  action  rakes  place 
in  and  about  Pisa  in  the  later  fifteenth 
century.  Prinzivalle,  a  Florentine 
mercenary,  is  besieging  the  city.  A 
dreamer,  a  Platonist,  a  lover  of 
beauty,  he  had  once  met  and  had 
ever  since  loved  Monna  Vanna.  She 
had  entirely  forgotten  him.  She  is 
dully  content  as  the  wife  of  Guido 
Colonna,  a  commonplace  Pisan  noble. 
Prinzivalle  agrees  to  send  food  to  the 


relief  of  Pisa  on  one  preposterous  con- 
dition, that  Monna  Vaima,  clad  only 
in  a  mantle,  should  spend  the  night 
in  his  tent.  Vanna,  determined  to 
save  the  city  at  any  cost,  forces  her 
husband's  consent.  Prinzivalle  loves 
her  too  dearly  to  harm  her.  He  goes 
back  with  her  to  Pisa.  Guido  can- 
not believe  in  the  innocence  of  the 
pair.  He  assumes  that  Vanna  has 
deUvered  the  enemy  into  his  hands 
and  praises  her  above  Lucrece  and 
Judith  as  a  self-immolated  heroine. 
Prinzivalle  he  condemns  to  death  by 
torture.  Vanna,  fully  awake  now  to 
the  difference  between  the  two  men, 
saves  Prinzivalle  and  flees  with 
him. 

Varden,  Dolly,  in  Dickens's  novel, 
Barnaby  Riidge  (1841),  daughter  of 
Gabriel  Varden,  locksmith.  She  was 
winsome  and  coquettish,  playing  fast 
and  loose  with  the  hearts  of  three 
admirers,  Joe  Willett,  Hugh  of  the 
Maypole  Inn,  and  Simon  Tappertit. 
She  dressed  in  the  Watteau  style. 
In  1875-76  a  Dolly  Varden  was  the 
popular  name  for  a  vari-colored  shirt- 
waist, and  hat  imitated  from  Watteau. 

In  any  just  sense  there  is  no  heroine  in 
Barnaby  Rudge,  which  is  a  book  of  more 
skill  and  power  than  any  that  Dickens  had 
yet  written.  We  may  dismiss  without  self- 
reproach  such  a  lady-like  lay-figure  as 
Emma  Haredale,  and  a  goblin  effigy  like 
Miss  Miggs,  and  come  without  delay  to 
Dolly  Varden,  who,  in  turn,  need  hardly 
delay  us  longer.  She  is  a  cheap  little  co- 
quette imagined  upon  the  commonest  lines, 
with  abundant  assertion  as  to  her  good 
looks  and  graces,  but  without  evidence  of 
the  charm  that  the  silliest  flirt  has  in  reality. 
She  is  nothing  and  she  does  nothing;  and 
she  cannot  be  petted  and  patted  by  her 
inventor,  with  all  his  fondness,  into  any 
semblance  of  personality. — W.  D.  Howklls: 
Heroines  of  Fiction,  vol.  i,  p.  136. 

Varden,  Mrs.  Martha,  in  Dickens's 
novel,  Barnaby  Riidge,  the  wife  of 
Gabriel,  a  lady  of  uncertain  temper, 
which,  "  being  interpreted,  signifies  a 
temper  tolerably  certain  to  make 
everybody  more  or  less  uncomfortable. 
.  .  .  When  other  people  were 
merry  Mrs.  Varden  was  dull,  and 
when  other  people  were  dull  Mrs. 
Varden  was  disposed  to  be  amazingly 
cheerful." 


Varina 


871 


Venner 


Varina,  a  poetical  name  given  by- 
Dean  Swift  to  Miss  Jane  Waryng,  for 
whom  he  professed  undying  siffection 
in  his  youth  and  to  whom  he  proposed 
marriage  when  a  yoimg  clergyman  of 
twenty-eight. 

Vathek,  hero  of  an  Oriental  ro- 
mance (1782)  by  William  Beckford. 
Historically  he  was  the  ninth  Abba- 
side  caliph  and  a  grandson  of  Haroun- 
al-Raschid.  Beckford  pictures  him 
as  a  cruel  but  magnificent  voluptuary, 
tempted  by  a  diabolical  Giaour  to 
the  commission  of  terrible  crimes, 
including  apostacy  from  the  Moslem 
faith.  He  is  finally  led  to  the  hall  of 
Eblis,  a  vast  subterranean  chamber, 
where  he  finds  himself  a  hopeless 
prisoner  forever. 

Vaughan,  Clara,  in  Blackmore's 
romance  of  that  name,  is  a  witness  to 
her  father's  murder  when  she  is  ten 
years  old,  and  devotes  her  life  to  the 
identification  of  the  murderer.  She 
inherits  an  abnormal  nervous  sus- 
ceptibility. 

Vavasour,  Mr.,  in  Disraeli's  novel, 
Tancred,  a  hospitable,  cheery,  and 
amiable  gentleman  who  was  evi- 
dently drawn  from  Richard  Monck- 
ton  Milnes,  Lord  Houghton.  Here  is 
how  Disraeli  describes  him: 

With  catholic  sympathies  and  an  eclectic 
turn  of  mind,  Mr.  Vavasour  saw  something 
good  in  everybody  and  everything.  .  .  . 
Vavasour  liked  to  know  everybody  who  was 
known,  and  to  see  everything  which  ought 
to  be  seen.  His  life  was  a  gyration  of  ener- 
getic curiosity,  an  insatiable  whirl  of  social 
celebrity.  There  was  not  a  congregation  of 
sages  and  philosophers  in  any  part  of  Europe 
which  he  did  not  attend  as  a  brother.  He 
was  present  at  the  camp  of  Kalisch  in  his 
yeomanry  uniform,  and  assisted  at  the 
festivals  of  Barcelona  in  an  Andalusian 
jacket.  He  was  everywhere  and  at  every- 
thing; he  had  gone  down  in  a  diving-bell 
and  up  in  a  balloon.  As  for  his  acquaint- 
ances, he  was  welcomed  in  every  land;  his 
universal  sympathies  seemed  omnipotent. 
Emperor  and  king.  Jacobin  and  Carbonari, 
alike  cherished  him.  He  was  the  steward 
of  Polish  balls  and  the  vindicator  of  Russian 
humanity;  he  dined  with  Louis  Philippe  and 
gave  dinners  to  Louis  Blanc. 

Veal,  Mrs.,  heroine  of  a  hoax  by 
Daniel  Defoe,  originally  published  as 
an  introduction  to  a  new  edition 
(1705)  of  Drelincourt's  Book  of  Con- 
solations  against  the  Fear  0/  Death; 


subsequently  issued  as  a  separate 
brochure  under  the  title  True  Rela- 
tion of  the  Apparition  of  One  Mrs. 
Veal.  Drelincourt's  pubUsher,  find- 
ing his  book  unsaleable,  appealed  to 
Defoe  for  an  introduction.  The 
result  was  this  ghost  story,  written 
with  such  apparent  gravity  and  sin- 
cerity, such  convincing  wealth  of 
detail,  that  it  was  accepted  as  genuine 
by  the  pubUc,  and  awoke  Drelin- 
court's still-bom  production  into 
vicarious  life.  The  story  feigns  that 
Mrs.  Veal,  on  September  8,  1705,  the 
day  after  her  death,  appeared  to 
Mrs.  Bargrave  at  Canterbury,  and 
held  a  long  conversation  with  her  on 
death  and  immortality. 

Veck,  Toby,  in  Dickens's  Christ- 
mas story,  The  Chimes,  a  ticket  porter 
nicknamed  Trotty  from  his  pace, 
*'  which  meant  speed  if  it  (Hdn't 
make  it."  As  he  trotted  on,  "  he 
would  call  out  to  fast  postmen  ahead 
of  him  to  get  out  of  the  way,  devoutly 
believing  that,  in  the  natural  course 
of  things,  he  must  inevitably  over- 
take and  run  them  down."  He  had 
a  passion  for  the  chime  of  bells  in  the 
church  near  his  station  and  invested 
them  with  a  strange  and  solemn 
character. 

Veiled  Prophet  of  Khorassen.    See 

MOKANNA. 

Veneering,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hamil- 
ton, in  Dickens's  Our  Mutual  Friend, 
purse-proud  parvenus  who  were  toler- 
ated by  society  on  accoimt  of  their 
wealth. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Veneering  were  bran-new 
people,  in  a  bran-new  house,  in  a  bran-new 
quarter  of  London.  Everything  about  the 
Veneerings  was  spick  and  span  new.  All 
their  furniture  was  new,  all  their  friends 
were  new,  all  their  servants  were  new,  their 
plate  was  new,  their  carriage  was  new,  their 
harness  was  new,  their  horses  were  new, 
their  pictures  were  new,  they  themselves 
were  new,  they  were  as  newly  married  as 
was  lawfully  compatible  with  their  having 
a  bran-new  baby. 

In  the  Veneering  establishment,  from  the 
hall  chairs  with  the  new  coat  of  arms,  to  the 
grand  pianoforte  with  the  new  action,  and 
upstairs  again  to  the  new  fire-escape,  all 
things  were  in  a  state  of  high  varnish  and 
polish. — Dickens:  Our  Mutual  Friend,  ii 
(1864). 

Venner,  Elsie,  heroine  of  a  novel 
(1861)  of  that  name,  by  0.  W.  Holmes. 


Venus 


372 


Vernon 


Elsie,  a  New  England  girl,  is  a  modern 
Lamia,  whose  moral  and  physical 
system  have  absorbed  the  poison  of 
a  rattlesnake  that  had  bitten  her 
mother  just  prior  to  her  birth.  The 
serpent  nature,  which  overshadows 
her  womanly  qualities,  expresses 
itself  outwardly  in  a  peculiar  imdu- 
lating  walk,  in  the  pattern  of  her 
dress,  in  her  habit  of  coiling  and  un- 
coiling a  gold  chain  about  her  wrist, 
in  the  mysterious  fascination  that 
dwells  within  the  strange  cold  glitter 
of  her  eyes,  compelling  involuntary- 
obedience.  The  story  shows  the 
gradual  humanizing  of  Elsie,  chiefly 
through  the  influence  of  an  absorbing 
love.  But  the  struggle  has  been  too 
protracted  and  too  severe.  Life 
perishes  with  it. 

Venus,  Mr.,  in  Our  Mutual  Friend, 
a  preserver  of  animals  and  birds  and 
an  articulator  of  human  bones. 
Rather  against  his  will,  he  joins  Wegg 
in  his  plan  of  blackmailing  Mr.  Boffin, 
but  repents  and  reveals  the  conspi- 
racy. According  to  Percy  Fitzgerald, 
the  prototype  of  this  character  (whose 
shop  was  at  42  St.  Andrew's  Street, 
London)  was  introduced  to  the  author 
by  his  illustrator,  Marcus  Stone, 
after  the  completion  of  the  first 
three  numbers  of  Our  Mutual  Friend. 

"This  original  character,"  writes  Mr. 
Fitzgerald,  "excited  much  attention,  and  a 
friend  of  the  great  writer,  as  well  as  of  the 
present  chronicler,  passing  through  this 
street,  was  irresistibly  attracted  by  this 
shop  and  its  contents,  kept  by  one  J.  Willis. 
When  he  next  saw  Mr.  Dickens,  he  said, 
'I  am  convinced  I  have  found  the  original 
of  Venus;'  on  which  said  Mr.  Dickens, 
'You  are  right.'"  Any  one  who  then 
visited  the  place  could  recognize  the  dingy, 
gloomy  interior,  the  articulated  skeleton  in 
the  corner,  the  genial  air  of  thick  grime  and 
dust. 

Venus  of  Hie,  in  Merlm^e's  short 
story  of  that  name.  The  basic  legend 
is  versified  by  William^  Morris  in  The 
Ring  given  to  Venus  in  the  Earthly 
Paradise.  On  the  day  of  his  nuptials, 
a  bridegroom,  in  thoughtless  sport, 
placed  his  spousal  ring  on  a  golden 
statue  of  Venus.  Seeking  later  to 
recover  it,  he  found,  to  his  horror, 
the  finger  of  the  image  crooked  and 
the  ring  immovable. 


Verges,  in  Shakespeare's  Much  Ado 
About  Nothing  (1600),  a  blundering 
constable,  fit^  underling  for  Dog- 
berry the  magistrate. 

Dogberry  and  Verges  In  this  play  are 
inimitable  specimens  of  quaint  blundering 
and  misprisions  of  meaning;  and  are  a  stand- 
ing record  of  that  formal  gravity  of  preten- 
sion and  total  want  of  common  understand- 
ing, which  Shakespeare  no  doubt  copied  from 
real  life,  and  which  in  the  course  of  two 
hundred  years  appear  to  have  ascended 
from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  offices  in  the 
state. 

Verisopht,  Lord  Frederick,  in  Dick- 
ens's Nicholas  Nickleby  (1838),  a 
young  and  foolish  nobleman  under 
the  thumb  of  Sir  Mulberry  Hawk, 
whom  eventually  he  turns  against, 
and  who  kills  him  in  a  duel. 

Vernon,  Diana,  in  Scott's  novel 
Rob  Roy  (18 1 8),  the  brilliant,  dashing, 
and  beautiful  mistress  of  Osbaldistone 
Hall,  who  by  popular  acclaim  stands 
peerless  among  all  Scott's  heroines. 
Brought  up  apart  from  her  sex,  she 
is  hoydenish  and  even  boyish  in  the 
display  of  her  exuberant  spirits,  but 
her  excellent  natural  sense  and  her 
maidenly  dignity  shield  her  from 
misunderstanding.  Captain  Basil 
Hall  thought  he  had  found  her  origi- 
nal in  Jane  Anne  Craunston,  an  old 
Scotch  gentlewoman  whom,  in  1834, 
he  had  found  nearing  her  end  in  a 
mediaeval  castle  in  Styria.  She  had 
married  its  owner.  Count  Wenzel 
Purgstall,  who  had  left  her  a  widow 
in  18 12.  In  youth  she  had  been  a 
friend  and  confidante  of  Scott's.  Her 
playful  allusions  to  her  independent 
ways  in  young  womanhood,  her  fond- 
ness for  horseback  riding,  and  the 
fact  that  Scott  had  sent  her  all  the 
Waverley  novels  as  they  appeared 
with  the  single  exception  of  Rob  Roy, 
all  seemed  to  confirm  the  captain's 
suspicions.  (See  S.  R.  Crockett: 
The  Scott  Originals.) 

Vernon,  Dorothy,  heroine  of  an 
historical  romance,  Dorothy  Vernon 
of  Haddon  Hall  (1902),  by  Charles 
Major.  A  compound  of  sweetness 
and  savagery,  she  is  madly  in  love 
with  Sir  John  Manners,  the  son  of  her 
father's  bitterest  enemy,  and  defies 
everybody  and  everything,  the  pro- 


Vemon 


373 


Vincy 


prieties  included.  She  makes  all  the 
advances,  she  lies  appallingly;  she 
threatens,  bullies,  wheedles,  and  sets 
two  kingdoms  by  the  ears,  imtil  she 
succeeds  in  having  her  own  way.  The 
story  is  founded  upon  fact.  Dorothy, 
the  daughter  and  heiress  of  Sir 
George  Vemon,  eloped  with  Sir  John 
Manners  and  became  ancestress  of 
the  present  dukes  of  Rutland,  to 
whom  Haddon  Hall  in  Derbyshire, 
former  seat  of  the  Vemon  family,  has 
passed.  The  door  through  which 
Dorothy  eloped  is  still  called  after 
her,  and  the  Vemon  name  is  com- 
memorated at  Haddon  by  engravings 
of  their  arms. 

Vemon,  Madame  de,  in  Mme.  de 
Stael's  Delphine  (1803),  the  intriguing 
mother  of  Matilda.  In  this,  the  most 
original  and  thoroughly  finished  char- 
acter in  the  book,  the  French  public 
were  quick  to  recognize  a  caricature 
of  Talleyrand.  The  feminine  Machia- 
velism,  the  supreme  yet  indolent 
egotism,  the  cool,  systematic  dissimu- 
lation and  passionless  dissipation  of 
the  character,  were  all  seized  upon 
as  so  many  points  of  resemblance. 
Mme.  de  Stael  herself  told  Sir  James 
Mackintosh  the  famous  hon-mot  of 
Talleyrand's :  "  I  understand , "  he  said 
to  her,  "  that  we  are  both  introduced 
in  your  book,  disguised  as  women?  " 

Vidal,  Julia,  heroine  of  Adolphe 
Belot's  Drame  de  la  Rue  de  la  Paix. 
Like  Fedora  in  the  later  play  by 
Sardou,  she  encourages  the  devotion 
of  her  husband's  supposed  murderer, 
Albert  Savari,  in  order  to  betray  him 
into  an  avowal  of  his  crime.  He  does 
indeed  end  by  confessing,  but  the 
motive  is  less  heroic  than  in  the  case 
of  Sardou's  hero.  Savari  has  killed 
Maurice  because  the  latter  has  injured 
him  in  some  money  transaction.  The 
honor  of  Julia  is  not  concerned,  and 
the  questions  of  casuistry  in  which 
Sardou  delights  have  no  place  in  the 
distress  of  the  heroine.  Albert  has 
only  to  kill  himself,  and  Julia  to  keep 
silence,  and  the  curtain  falls. 

Village  Master,  The,  in  Goldsmith's 
idyllic  poem.  The  Deserted  Village 
(1770),  an  amusing  type  of  the  rustic 
pedagogue,  who  astonishes  the  com- 


munity with  "  words  of  leamed  length 
and  thundering  sovmd," — 

And  still  they  gazed,  and  still  the  wonder 

grew 
That  one  small  head  could  carry  all  he  knew. 
The  Deserted  Village,!.  212. 

Irving,  In  his  Life  of  Goldsmith,  sug- 
gests that  the  original  of  this  charac- 
ter was  Goldsmith's  own  teacher  in 
the  village  school  at  Lissoy,  a  certain 
Thomas  Byrne  (nicknamed  Paddy), 
an  old  soldier  who  had  seen  service, 
and  who  consequently  may  have  fur- 
nished a  hint  for  the  wandering 
beggar  who 

Wept  o'er  his  wounds,  or  tales  of  sorrow 

done, 
Shouldered    his    crutch,    and    showed    how 

fields  were  won. 

The  Deserted  Village,  1.  157. 

Village  Preacher,  The,  in  Gold- 
smith's Deserted  Village  (1770),  a 
sketch,  exquisite  alike  in  its  gentle 
humor  and  its  immanent  pathos,  of  a 
Protestant  parson  in  an  Irish  village. 
Mrs.  Hodgson,  Goldsmith's  sister, 
took  this  to  be  a  portrait  of  their 
father;  others  have  identified  him  as 
Henry  Goldsmith,  the  brother,  and 
even  as  the  uncle  Contarine.  They 
may  all  have  contributed,  each  a 
touch,  to  the  fully  rounded  portrait. 

Vincentis,  in  Shakespeare's  com- 
edy. Measure  for  Measure  (1603),  the 
Duke  of  Vienna.  Being  anxious  to 
learn  the  truth  about  the  officials 
that  surround  him,  he  delegates  his 
powers  for  a  period  to  Angelo  and 
feigns  to  go  on  a  journey,  but  really 
disguises  himself  as  Friar  Lodowick. 
Thus  he  imearths  many  abuses  in  his 
court  and  unmasks  a  few  hypocrites. 
He  is  described  as  "  one  that  above 
all  other  strifes  contended  especially 
to  know  himself. ' ' 

Vincy,  Rosamund,  in  George'Eliot's 
novel,  Middlemarch  (1871-72),  a 
beautiful  young  woman  who  under 
a  veil  of  perfect  delicacy  and  refine- 
ment conceals  a  selfish,  self -occupied, 
and  obstinate  spirit.  Her  marriage 
to  Lydgate  is  fatal  to  the  develop- 
ment of  his  higher  self.  George  Eliot 
is  reported  to  have  said  that  the 
character  which  she  found  most 
difiScult  to  support  was  that  of  Rosa- 
mond Vincy. 


Viola 


374 


Volpone 


Rosamund  Vincy  is  a  mood  of  one  of  the 
forms  of  stupidity  against  which  the  gods 
fight  in  vain.  Being  utterly  incapable  of 
even  understanding  her  husband's  aspira- 
tions, fixing  her  mind  on  the  vulgar  kind  of 
success,  and  having  the  strength  of  will 
which  comes  from  an  absolute  limitation  to 
one  aim,  she  is  a  most  effective  torpedo,  and 
paralyses  all  Lydgate's  energies.  He  is 
entangled  in  money  diflSculties;  gives  up 
his  aspirations;  sinks  into  a  merely  popular 
physician,  and  is  sentenced  to  die  early  of 
diphtheria. — Leslie  Stephen:  George  Eliot. 

Viola,  heroine  of  Shakespeare's 
comedy,^  Twelfth  Night,  Having 
been  shipwrecked  on  the  coast  of 
Illyria,  she  assumes  male  attire  to 
protect  herself  in  this  strange  country, 
and  imder  the  name  of  Cesaria  enters 
the  service  of  the  duke,  with  whom 
she  falls  deeply  in  love.  Like  another 
and  a  different  John  Alden,  she  is 
made  the  confidante  of  his  passion 
for  Olivia  and  his  messenger  to  her. 
Olivia,  mistaking  her  sex,  falls  in  her 
turn  in  love  with  Viola. 

How  careful  has  Shakespeare  been  in 
Twelfth  Night  to  preserve  the  dignity  and 
delicacy  of  Viola  under  her  disguise!  Even 
when  wearing  a  page's  doublet  and  hose, 
she  is  never  mixed  up  with  any  transaction 
which  the  most  fastidious  mind  could  regard 
as  leaving  a  stain  on  her.  She  is  employed 
by  the  Duke  on  an  embassy  of  love  to  Olivia, 
but  on  an  embassy  of  the  most  honorable 
kind.  Wycherley  borrows  Viola  [in  The 
Plain  Dealer]  and  Viola  forthwith  becomes  a 
pandar  of  the  basest  sort. — Macaulay,  £5- 
says:  Leigh  Hunt, 

Violante,  one  of  the  heroines  of 
Lord  Lytton's  My  Novel  (1853). 

To  the  unconscious  grace  and  innate 
nobility  which,  rightly  or  wrongly,  we 
associate  with  high  birth  and  a  long  line  of 
ancestors,  she  adds  something  of  the  energy 
and  modest  boldness  of  the  Viola  in  Twelfth 
Night,  and  possibly  Lord  Lytton  may,  with 
the  name,  have  borrowed  from  Shakespeare 
the  hint  of  her  relations  with  L'Estrange. 
— T.  H.  S.  EscOTT. 

Virginia,  heroine  of  a  pastoral 
romance,  Paul  and  Virginia  (1788), 
by  Bemardin  de  St.  Pierre.  The 
scene  is  laid  in  the  island  of  Port 
Louis  in  the  Mauritius.  Virginia  is 
the  daughter  of  a  French  widow, 
Madame  La  Tour,  who  had  been  cast 
off  by  the  family  for  marrying  beneath 
her.  Paul  is  the  illegitimate  son  of  a 
woman  betrayed  by  her  lover.  The 
children    are    neighbors;    they    are 


brought  up  in  pastoral  simplicity 
and  ignorance  of  the  outer  world. 
The  boy  and  girl  idyl  is  rudely  inter- 
rupted when  a  letter  arrives  from 
Madame  La  Tour's  aunt,  who  pro- 
poses to  adopt  Virginia  if  she  will 
come  over  to  France  to  be  educated. 
So  Virginia  sails  away,  leaving  Paul 
disconsolate  on  the  island.  Two 
years  pass.  Virginia  is  disowned  by 
the  aunt  because  she  will  not  marry 
at  her  dictation.  The  ship  that  bears 
her  back  to  her  old  home  is  heralded. 
Paul  in  a  frenzy  of  delight  rushes 
down  to  the  shore.  A  sudden  storm 
arises;  the  ship  goes  down  in  sight  of 
the  island.  Virginia  might  have  been 
saved  but  for  the  maidenly  modesty 
that  made  her  refuse  the  proffered 
assistance  of  a  naked  sailor.  Her 
body  is  washed  ashore,  and  two 
months  later  Paul  follows  her  to  the 
grave. 

The  story  has  furnished  the  subject 
for  various  musical  scores, — notably 
a  three-act  opera  by  Rudolph  Kreut- 
zer  (1791),  a  lyrical  drama  in  three 
acts  by  Lesueur  (1794),  and  an  opera 
in  three  acts  and  seven  tableaus 
(1876),  libretto  by  Michel  Carr6  and 
Jules  Barbier,  music  by  Victor 
Mass^. 

Vogler,  George  Joseph,  usually 
known  as  Ahh6  or  Abt  Vogler  (1749- 
18 14),  is  the  subject  of  Robert  Brown- 
ing's poem,  Abt  Vogler,  in  Dramatis 
PersoncB  (1864).  He  was  a  German 
organist,  composer,  teacher,  and 
inventor,  playing  on  his  own  instru- 
ment, the  "  orchestrion."  The  poet 
puts  in  his  mouth  a  monologue, 
taking  as  its  main  theme  that  some 
soul  of  permanence  lies  behind  the 
transitoriness  of  musical  soimds,  for 
the  good  and  the  beautiful  are  lasting, 
while  all  negations,  such  as  evil, 
darkness,  ugliness,  are  non-extant, 
the  shifting  shadow  cast  by  the 
eternal  substance. 

Volpone,  hero  of  Ben  Jonson's 
comedy,    Volpone,  or  the  Fox  (1605). 

Volpone,  a  miser  and  sensualist,  works 
on  the  greed  of  his  acquaintances  and,  by 
false  reports  of  his  sickness  and  death,  ex- 
cites their  hopes  of  inheriting  his  fortune, 
and  lures  them  into  all  kind  of  intolerable 


Volmnnia 


375 


Wagner 


knavery.  A  shameless  lawyer,  a  father  who 
disinherits  his  son  in  order  to  satisfy  his 
own  greed,  and  a  wittol  who  offers  his  wife 
In  return  for  an  inheritance,  are  the  chief 
dupes.  .  .  .  Nowhere  else,  unless  in 
lago,  has  vice  been  drawn  with  such  fulness 
of  detail  and  yet  with  such  consistency  as 
in  Volpone. — Ashley  H.  Thorndike. 

Volumnia,  in  Shakespeare's  Corio- 
lanus,  mother  of  Coriolanus.  See  this 
entry  in  vol.  ii. 

In  Volumnia  Shakespeare  has  given  us 
the  portrait  of  a  Roman  matron,  conceived 
in  the  true  antique  spirit  and  finished  in 
every  part.  Although  Coriolanus  is  the 
hero  of  the  play,  yet  much  of  the  interest 
of  the  action  and  the  final  catastrophe  turn 
upon  his  mother,  Volumnia,  and  the  power 


she  exercised  over  his  mind,  by  which, 
according  to  the  story,  "she  saved  Rome 
and  lost  her  son."  Her  lofty  patriotism, 
her  patrician  haughtiness,  her  maternal 
pride,  her  eloquence,  and  her  towering  spirit 
are  exhibited  with  the  utmost  power  of 
effect;  yet  the  truth  of  female  nature  is 
beautifully  preserved  and  the  portrait,  with 
all  its  vigor,  is  without  harshness. — Mrs. 
Anna  B.  Jameson:  Characteristics  of 
Women  (1832). 

Vye,  Eustacia,  heroine  of  Thomas 
Hardy's  novel,  The  Return  of  the 
Native  (1878),  a  beautiful,  passionate, 
discontented  woman,  "  the  raw  ma- 
terial of  a  divinity,"  whose  marriage 
to  Clym  Yeobright  blights  his  dreams 
and  wrecks  his  life. 


w 


Wackles,  Mrs.,  in  Dickens's  Old 
Curiosity  Shop,  viii  (1840),  proprietor 
of  a  day  school  for  young  ladies  at 
Chelsea;  a  well-meaning  but  rather 
venomous  sexagenarian  who  looked 
after  the  corporal  punishment  and 
other  terrors  of  the  establishment, 
while  the  remaining  departments 
were  distributed  among  her  three 
daughters  as  follows:  Miss  Melissa, 
English  grammar,  composition,  geog- 
raphy and  the  use  of  dimib-bells; 
Miss  Sophy,  writing,  arithmetic, 
dancing,  music  and  general  fascina- 
tion; Miss  Jane,  needlework,  marking 
and  samplery. 

Wade,  Miss,  in  Dickens's  Little 
Dorrit  (1857),  a  handsome  young 
woman  of  a  sullen  and  vindictive 
temper,  who  fancies  herself  the  object 
of  general  persecution.  Finding  a 
congenial  spirit  in  Tattycoram  (a 
niclaiame  for  Harriet  Beadle,  adopted 
child  of  Mr.  Meagles),  she  enticed  her 
away  from  the  Meagle  household,  and 
the  two  lived  together  for  a  while  in 
avowed  hatred  to  all  mankind. 

Wadman,  Widow,  in  Sterne's  novel. 
Life  and  Opinions  of  Tristram  Shandy 
(1759)1  a  middle-aged  widow,  attrac- 
tive and  designing,  who  seeks  to 
capture  Uncle  Toby  for  her  second 
husband.  A  famous  episode  is  that 
in  which  she  pretends  to  have  some- 
thing in  her  eye  and  gets  the  hero  of 
Namur  to  investigate  it.    He  bends 


lower  and  lower  as  she  approaches 
her  face  nearer  and  nearer,  but  he 
shrewdly  escapes  the  expected  climax 
of  a  kiss  and  a  proposal. 

Wagg,  Mr.,  in  Thackeray's  Pen- 
dennis,  a  novelist  and  a  professional 
wit,  evidently  meant  as  a  caricature 
of  Theodore  Hook.  Thackeray  actu- 
ally had  the  audacity  to  put  into 
Wagg's  mouthy  one  of  Hook's  own 
jokes.  Wagg  is  made  to  ask  Mrs. 
Bungay,  "  Does  your  cook  say  he's  a 
Frenchman? "  and  to  reply,  when 
that  lady  expresses  her  ignorance, 
"  Because,  if  he  does,  he's  a-quizzin' 
yer  "  (cuisinier). 

Wagner,  Christopher,  in  the  Faust 
cycle  of  legends,  the  famulus  or 
servant  apprentice  of  Faustus.  He 
is  introduced  into  the  Faust  of  both 
Marlowe  and  Goethe. 

The  latter  makes  him  the  type  of 
the  pedant  and  pedagogue. 

He  is  the  Philistine  among  scholars,  the 
pragmatist,  the  pedagogue  who  dwells  In 
the  letter  and  misses  the  spirit,  in  whom  the 
love  of  books  degenerates  into  bibliomania, 
learning  into  pedantry,  religion  into  cant, 
and  the  eternal  longings  of  the  soul  after  the 
harmonies  of  art  into  mere  dilettanteism  and 
connoisseurship.  To  him  the  vanity  of 
knowledge  can  have  no  meaning,  because 
the  chief  use  of  knowledge  is  to  enable  him 
to  measure  himself  with  his  fellows  and  find 
he  is  a  cubit  above  them.  Give  him  fame, 
"recognition,"  and  he  is  happy.  To  Faust 
recognition  would  be  useless.  A  few  inches 
above  his  fellows  places  him  no  nearer  to 
the  stars!— Walsh:  Faust,  the  Legend  and 
the  Poem. 


Wakefield 


376 


Wandering  ^^Ilie 


Wakefield,  Vicar  of.  See  Prim- 
rose, Dr.  Charles. 

Wakem,  Philip,  in  George  Eliot's 
novel,  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,  the 
crippled  son  of  a  lawyer  who  had 
helped  to  ruin  old  Mr.  Tulliver. 
Hence  Tom  TuUiver,  the  son,  hates 
him  and  all  his  race,  and  Maggie  is 
forced  to  give  up  PhiUp  just  at  the 
crisis,  when  a  motherly  pity  for  his 
deformity  and  a  keen  sjrmpathy  with 
his  high  ideals  had  combined  to  pro- 
duce something  dangerously  akin  to 
love. 

Waldbourg,  Count,  hero  of  Kotze- 
bue's  melodrama,  Menschenhasz  und 
Rene  (1787),  called  The  Stranger  in 
the  English  adaptation  (1808)  by 
Benjamin  Thompson.  He  had  mar- 
ried the  sixteen-year-old  Adelaide, 
who  eloped  with  a  lover  after  bearing 
him  two  children.  He  then  wandered 
arotmd  the  world  incognito,  known 
only  as  the  Stranger  wherever  he 
happens  to  be.  She  herself,  repentant, 
discards  her  lover,  and  under  the 
name  of  Mrs.  Haller  enters  the  service 
of  Countess  Wintersen.  See  Haller, 
Mrs. 

Waldfried,  Heinrich,  in  Berthold 
Auerbach's  Waldfried  (1874),  the 
head  of  the  Waldfried  family,  a  South 
German  whose  journal  forms  the 
book.  An  old  man  who  has  been 
through  a  great  deal  and  has  seen 
many  changes  since  1848,  when  the 
journal  begins,  he  still  retains  an 
enthusiastic  temperament,  a  keen 
himior,  and  a  deep  fund  of  pathos. 
His  account  of  his  wife's  death  and 
his  subsequent  grief  are  vividly 
affecting. 

Wall,  in  the  interlude  of  Pyramus 
and  Thisbe  in  A  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,  is  enacted  by  Snout,  a  tirJcer: 
In  this  same  interlude  it  doth  befall. 
That  I,  one  Snout  by  name,  present  a  wall. 

Actv^ 

He  Is  thus  described  in  the  prologue 
to  the  interlude: 

This  man  with  lime  and  roughcast  doth 
present 
Wall,  that  vile  Wall  which  did  these  lovers 
sunder: 
And  through  Wall's  chink,  poor  souls,  they 
are  content 
To  whisper.     At  the  which  let  no  man 
wonder. 


Wallace,  Sir  William,  the  friend  of 
Robert  Bruce  and  one  of  the  great 
national  heroes  of  Scotland,  is  cele- 
brated in  a  poetical  chronicle.  The 
Acts  and  Deeds  of  Sir  William  Wallace 
(circa  1460),  by  the  wandering  min- 
strel called  Blind  Harry.  This  is 
said  to  have  been  mainly  founded  on 
a  Latin  Life  of  the  hero  by  his  school- 
fellow, John  Blair — 

The  man 
That  first  compild  in  dyt  the  Latyne  buk 
OflE  Wallace  lyflf,  rycht  famous  of  renoune. 

It  was  republished  in  1869. 

Wallace  is  one  of  the  heroes  of  Jane 
Porter's  historical  novel,  The  Scottish 
Chiefs  (1809).  Infuriated  by  the 
murder  of  his  wife  by  English  soldiers, 
he  rouses  his  countrymen  against  the 
English  king,  Edward  I,  captures 
castles,  fights  bloody  battles,  and, 
going  in  disguise  as  a  harper  to 
Edward's  court,  assists  Bruce  to 
escape  therefrom,  and  accompanies 
him  to  France  to  rescue  the  abducted 
Helen  Mar. 

Walpurga,  in  Berthold  Auerbach's 
novel,  On  the  Heights  (Auf  der  Hohe, 
1865),  the  wet-nurse  for  the  crown 
prince,  an  upright  and  forthright 
German  peasant,  whose  shrewd  say- 
ings are  the  salt  of  the  book.  She 
rejoins  her  people  laden  with  presents, 
and  she  and  her  husband  Hansei  buy 
a  farm  among  their  native  mountains. 
Hither  comes  the  Countess  Irma 
(q.v.),  to  work  out  her  own  salvation 
on  the  heights. 

Walter,  marquis  of  Saluzzo,  in 
Chaucer's  The  Clerk's  Tale  (1388), 
the  husband  of  Griselda  (q.v.). 

Walter,  Master,  the  titular  hero  of 
Knowles's  drama,  The  Hunchback. 
See  Julia. 

Walter  of  Vanila,  in  Charles  Kings- 
ley's  dramatic  poem,  The  Saint's 
Tragedy,  a  vassal  of  the  Landgrave 
Lewis,  representing  the  healthy  ani- 
malism of  the  Teutonic  mind,  with 
its  mixture  of  deep  earnestness  and 
hearty  animalism. 

Wandering  Willie,  in  Scott's  Red- 
gauntlet,  the  blind  fiddler,  William 
Steenson,  who  tells  Darsie  Latimer, 
as  they  tramp  together  across  the  lea, 


Wangell 


377 


Ware 


the  story  of  Sir  Robert  Redgauntlet 
and  his  son  Sir  John. 

Wangell,  Hilda,  in  Ibsen's  drama, 
The  Master- Builder  (1892),  a  young 
girl  who  tempts  Solness,  the  sexa- 
genarian hero,  into  a  passion  that 
eventually  destroys  him.  She  may 
be  taken  as  a  symbol  of  youth  arriving 
too  late  within  the  circle  which  age 
has  trodden  for  its  steps  to  walk  in, 
and  luring  it  too  rashly  by  the  mirage 
of  happiness  into  paths  no  longer 
within  its  physical  and  moral 
capacity. 

Ward,  Artemus,  "  the  genial  show- 
man," a  distinct  personality  and  not 
a  mere  pseudonym,  invented  by 
Charles  Farrar  Browne  as  the  pre- 
tended author  of  his  works.  He  is 
presented  to  us  as  a  shrewd,  course, 
grasping  Yankee,  full  of  humor,  both 
conscious  and  unconscious,  utterly 
irreverent  and  always  at  his  ease. 
With  his  "  wax  figgurs "  and  his 
kangaroo,  "  a  amoozin  little  cuss," 
he  passes  from  State  to  State  and 
even  from  America  to  Europe.  He 
is  denounced  as  "  a  man  of  sin  "  by 
the  Shaker  elder;  is  entertained  by  the 
Mormons;  is  greeted  effusively  by  the 
Women's  Rights  females;  interviews 
President  Lincoln,  beset  by  "  orifice 
seekers  coming  down  the  chimney," 
and  later  Albert  Edward  and  Prince 
Napoleon;  listens  unconcernedly  to 
Union  orators;  has  his  show  confis- 
cated by  the  screaming  eagle  of  the 
Confederacy;  and  escapes  home  to 
Betsy  Jane,  the  partner  of  his  joys 
and  sorrows,  whose  relations  he  is 
avowedly  willing  to  sacrifice  on  the 
altar  of  his  country.  There  was  an 
American  general  in  the  Revolution- 
ary army  named  Artemas  Ward,  but 
he  had  nothing  in  common  with  the 
showman  save  his  name. 

This  showman,  Artemus,  is  one  of  the 
solidest  figures  in  the  gallery  of  American 
fiction.  To  the  public  for  whom  Browne 
wrote  he  is  still  a  much  more  real  person 
than  is  Charles  Farrar  Browne  himself. 
Certainly  there  could  not  be  a  contrast 
greater  than  that  between  the  blatant,  vul- 
gar, impudent  old  bu£foon  of  the  book  and 
the  quiet,  delicate,  pensive,  sensitive- 
looking  young  gentleman  of  the  lecture 
platform.  And  yet  before  he  had  been 
speaking  five  minutes  you  could  understand 
how  and  why  the  creator  of  Artemus  was 


his     creator. — Julian     Hawthorne     and 
hEOiJARDl,EM.ON:AmericanLiterature(iS9i). 

Ward,  Rev.  John,  hero  of  a  novel 
by  Mrs.  Margaret  C.  Deland  (1888). 
A  logical  Calvinist  who  believes  in 
all  that  that  term  implies  and 
preaches  with  conviction  its  sternest 
doctrines, — election,  reprobation,  and 
eternal  punishment.  His  wife,  nee 
Helen  Jaffrey,  niece  of  an  easy-going 
liberal  Episcopal,  cherishes  broad 
modern  views  which  continually 
clash  with  his.  The  congregation 
side  with  the  minister,  and  the  domes- 
tic circle  suffers  accordingly. 

Any  real  Calvinist  is  at  this  hour  rare; 
one  who  accepts  the  full  consequences  of 
his  faith  always  has  been,  John  Ward 
believed  in  the  damnation  of  tne  heathen, 
and  more,  in  the  damnation  of  all  who 
disbelieved  in  damnation — of  all  who,  to 
quote  one  of  his  elders,  were  not  "grounded 
on  hell."  This  is  also  the  belief  of  thousands 
of  to-day,  who  yet  eat,  drink,  and  are  merry. 
John  Ward  believed,  suffered,  crucified 
himself,  and  fell  a  martyr  to  his  faith  at  his 
own  hands,  in  a  fashion  logical,  but  hardly 
natural. — N.  Y.  Nation. 

Wardle,  Mr.  (of  Manor  Farm, 
Dingley  Dell),  in  Dickens's  Pickwick 
Papers,  friend  of  Mr.  Pickwick  and 
his  companions;  a  stout,  hearty, 
honest  old  gentleman,  who  is  most 
happy  when  he  is  making  others  the 
same. 

Wardle,  Miss  Rachael,  sister  of  the 
above  ;^  a.  spinster  of  doubtful  age, 
with  dignity  in  her  air,  majesty  in  her 
eye,  and  touch-me-not-ishness  in  her 
walk.  The  "  too  susceptible  "  Mr. 
Tupman,  falling  in  love  with  her,  is 
circumvented  by  the  adroit  Mr. 
Jingle,  who  elopes  with  her,  but  is 
pursued,  overtaken,  and  induced  to 
relinquish  his  prize  in  consideration 
of  a  check  for  a  hundred  and  twenty 
pounds. 

Ware,  Thereon,  hero  of  Harold 
Frederic's  novel,  The  Damnation  of 
Thereon  Ware  (1896).  A  young 
Methodist  minister  in  the  town  of 
Octavius  (identified  as  Elmira,  N.  Y.), 
a  married  man,  detesting  "  Popery," 
he  has  all  his  views  disturbed  and 
distorted  by  association  with  one 
Father  Forbes,  greatly  his  superior  in 
learning  and  intelligence,  who  shakes 
his  belief  in  Protestantism  without 


Waring 


378 


Warrington 


inculcating  faith  in  any  other  form  of 
Christianity.  He  falls  in  love  with  a 
Roman  Catholic  girl,  Celia  Madden, 
a  great  friend  of  Father  Forbes,  who 
toys  with  him  for  her  own  amusement 
and  then  throws  him  over.  Mad- 
dened with  pique,  remorse,  and 
shame,  he  goes  on  a  protracted  spree, 
and  is  saved  by  a  couple  of  shrewd 
sophisticated  Methodists,  who  per- 
suade him  to  abandon  the  ministry 
and  go  into  business. 

Waring,  titular  hero  of  a  poem 
by  Robert  Browning,  who  is  identi- 
fied with  Alfred  Domett,  the  poet. 
Waring  is  a  young  man  living  a 
secluded  life  in  London.  To  the 
world  his  manners  have  the  reserve 
of  intense  pride,  but  to  his  few  inti- 
mates he  freely  opens^  his  heart, 
avowing  his  wild  aspirations  and  his 
confident  belief  in  his  ability  to 
realise  them.  His  boasting  is  tem- 
pered with  so  much  good  nature  that 
his  friends  do  not  scruple  to  let  him 
see  how  ridiculous  they  deem  the 
contrast  between  his  abilities  and 
his  astounding  claims.  He  does  not 
appear  to  be  wounded,  yet  one  night 
he  disappears  without  a  word  of 
farewell. 

Browning's  poem  begins: 

"What's  become  of  Waring 

Since  he  gave  us  all  the  slip. 
Chose  land-travel  or  sea-faring. 

Boats  and  chest  or  staff  and  scrip, 
Rather  than  pace  up  and  down, 
Any  longer,  London-town?" 

Warner,  in  Bulwer  Lytton's  ro- 
mance, The  Last  of  the  Barons,  a 
reputed  magician  in  league  with 
Satan,  but  really  a  scientific  pioneer 
who  invents  an  embryo  steam-engine. 
The  author  looked  upon  this  as  one 
of  his  finest  conceptions;  Warner's 
daughter  Sybil  was  another  of  his 
favorites. 

Warren,  Mrs.,  titular  heroine  of 
G.  B.  Shaw's  comedy,  Mrs.  Warren's 
Profession,  is  in  plain  words  the 
keeper  of  a  house  of  prostitution, 
who  defends  her  metier  with  cutting 
sarcasm  on  modern  hypocrisy. 

Instead  of  maintaining  an  association  in 
the  imagination  of  the  spectators  between 
prostitution  and  fashionable  beauty,  luxury 
»nd  refinement,  ds  do  La  Dame  aux  Corne- 


lias, The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  Iris  Zaza, 
and  countless  other  plays,  Mrs.  Warren's 
Profession  exhibits  the  life  of  the  courtesan 
in  all  Its  arid  actuality,  and  inculcates  a 
lesson  of  the  sternest  morality. — Archibald 
Henderson:    George  Bernard  Shaw,  p.  304. 

The  play  of  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession  Is 
concerned  with  a  coarse  mother  and  a  cold 
daughter;  the  mother  drives  the  ordinary 
and  dirty  trade  of  harlotry;  the  daughter 
does  not  know  until  the  end  the  atrocious 
origin  of  all  her  own  comfort  and  refinement. 
The  daughter,  when  the  discovery  is  made, 
freezes  up  into  an  iceberg  of  contempt; 
which  is  indeed  a  very  womanly  thing  to  do. 
The  mother  explodes  into  pulverizing  cyni- 
cism and  practicality,  which  is  also  very 
womanly.  The  dialogue  is  drastic  and 
sweeping;  the  daughter  says  the  trade  is 
loathsome;  the  mother  answers  that  she 
loathes  it  herself;  that  every  healthy  person 
does  loathe  the  trade  by  which  she  lives. — 
G.  K.  Chesterton:  George  Bernard  Shaw, 
p.  132. 

Warren,  Vivie,  in  George  Bernard 
Shaw's  comedy,  Mrs.  Warren's  Pro- 
fession, is  the  dramatist's  conception 
of  "  a  real  modern  lady  of  the  gov- 
erning classes — not  the  sort  of  thing 
that  theatrical  and  critical  authorities 
imagine  such  a  lady  to  be."  He 
professed  himself  astonished  at  Wil- 
liam Archer's  charge  (Daily  News, 
June  21,  1902)  that  Vivie  was  simply 
Shaw  in  petticoats. 

One  of  my  female  characters,  who  drinks 
whiskey  and  smokes  cigars  and  reads  detect- 
ive stories  and  regards  the  fine  arts,  espe- 
cially music,  as  an  insufferable  and  unin- 
telligible waste  of  time,  has  been  declared 
by  my  friend,  Mr.  William  Archer,  to  be 
an  exact  and  authentic  portrait  of  myself, 
on  no  other  grounds  in  the  world  except 
that  she  is  a  woman  of  business  and  not  a 
creature  of  romantic  impulse. — G.  B.  Shaw: 
Dramatic  Opinions. 

Warrington,  George,  in  Thack- 
eray's Pendennis,  an  intimate  friend 
of  the  titular  hero,  and  eke  his  guide 
and  philosopher;  a  warm-hearted, 
level-headed  man,  with  a  rough  ex- 
terior. In  regard  to  this  character 
Lady  Anne  Thackeray  Ritchie  once 
wrote  to  an  American  correspondent: 
"  My  father  scarcely  ever  put  real 
people  into  his  books,  though  he  of 
course  found  suggestions  among  the 
people  with  whom  he  was  thrown.  I 
have  always  thought  that  there  was 
something  of  himself  in  Warrington. 
Perhaps  the  serious  part  of  his  nature 


Warwick 


379 


Waverley 


was  vaguely  drawn  in  that  character. 
There  was  also  a  little  likeness  to  his 
friend  Edward  Fitzgerald,  who  always 
lived  a  very  soHtary  life."  (See  Lip- 
pincoU's  Magazine.) 

One  may  appeal,  however,  from 
Thackeray's  daughter  to  Thackeray 
himself:  When  Pendennis  was  pub- 
lished, he  sent  a  copy  to  one  of  his 
intimate  friends,  George  Moreland 
Crawford,  Paris  correspondent  of  the 
London  Daily  News,  who  had  nursed 
the  novelist  through  the  long  and 
dangerous  illness  which  had  nearly 
interrupted  Pendennis  forever.  The 
copy  was  accompanied  by  the  fol- 
lowing letter: 

You  will  find  much  to  remind  you  of  old 
talks  and  faces — of  William  John  O'Connell, 
Jack  Sheehan,  and  Andrew  Archdecne. 
There  is  something  of  you  in  Warrington, 
but  he  is  not  fit  to  hold  a  candle  to  you,  for, 
taking  you  all  around,  you  are  the  most 
genuine  fellow  that  ever  strayed  from  a 
better  world  into  this.  You  don't  smoke, 
and  he  is  a  consumed  smoker  of  tobacco. 
Bordeaux  and  port  were  your  favorites  at 
the  "Deanery"  and  the  "Garrick,"  and 
War,  is  always  guzzling  beer.  But  he  has 
your  honesty,  and,  like  you,  could  not  pos- 
ture if  he  tried.  You  have  a  strong  affinity 
for  the  Irish.  May  you  soma  day  find  an 
Irish  girl  to  lead  you  to  matrimony !  There's 
no  such  good  wife  as  a  daughter  of  Erin. 

Warrington,  therefore,  seems  to 
have  owed  his  being  to  the  novelist's 
acquaintance  with  Crawford,  al- 
though there  is  imdoubtedly  (and 
possibly  imconsciously)  much  of 
Thackeray  himself  in  it, — more,  per- 
haps, than  in  the  character  of  Pen- 
dennis. 

Warwick,  Diana,  heroine  of  George 
Meredith's  novel,  Diana  of  the  Cross- 
ways  (1885).  An  Irish  girl  of  good 
family,  of  imusual  wit,  beauty,  and 
fascination, — ^but  exuberant,  inco- 
herent, unequal, — she  makes  an  un- 
fortunate marriage  with  Warwick. 
The  uncongenial  husband,  knowing 
that  he  is  neither  loved  nor  respected, 
grows  antagonistic,  then  jealous,  and, 
finding  suspicious  circumstances  in 
her  intimacy  with  Lord  Dannisburg, 
sues  for  a  divorce.  He  fails  to  prove 
his  case.  Diana,  legally  a  wife  but 
separated  from  her  husband,  main- 
tains herself  by  her  pen,  keeps  up  a 
charming   little    house,    and   draws 


about  her  a  brilliant  circle  of  friends. 
In  her  personality  and  her  career  she 
is  evidently  a  reminiscence  of  Lady 
Caroline  Norton,  Sheridan's  grand- 
daughter, famous  for  her  beauty,  her 
wit,  and  her  independence  of  con- 
ventional opinion. 

To  construct  a  character  which  would  fit 
the  known  facts;  to  create  a  woman  dazzling 
by  the  brilliancy  of  her  personality,  and 
liable  by  the  very  force  of  the  qualities 
which  raised  her  above  the  crowd  to  commit 
indiscretions  unpardonable  by  the  world, 
was  a  congenial  exercise  to  his  inventive 
faculty,  and  the  result  is  a  singularly  vivid 
conception,  worked  out  with  great  literary 
power.  It  is  to  be  doubted  whether  even 
a  poet  is  a  more  difficult  character  for  fiction 
than  a  witty  woman  of  the  world;  and 
amongst  all  his  intellectual  and  literary 
feats  Mr.  Meredith  has  perhaps  never 
accomplished  one  more  striking  than  in 
making  us  feel  that  his  Diana  justified  her 
reputation.  He  has  made  her  move  and 
speak  before  us  as  a  living  woman,  dowered 
with  exceptional  gifts  of  "blood  and  brains." 
Of  the  two  the  brains  "have  it"  decidedly. 
She  is  too  much  like  Charles  II  in  the  con- 
trast between  her  sayings  and  doings.  The 
latter  are  almost  invariably  foolish. — Satur- 
day  Review,  March  21,  1885. 

Waters,  Esther,  heroine  and  title 
of  a  novel  (1894)  by  George  Moore. 
The  daughter  of  a  drunkard  who 
neglects  his  wife,  Esther  becomes 
scullery  maid  in  the  household  of  a 
horse-racing  squire,  is  seduced  by  a 
fellow-servant,  William  Latch,  but, 
pricked  by  conscience,  refuses  all 
proffers  of  assistance  when  a  son  is 
bom,  and  endures  terrible  privations 
to  remain  respectable  and  bring  up 
her  boy  in  the  right  path.  Eventually 
she  marries  her  seducer,  now  a  book- 
maker, who  keeps  a  low  public  house. 
Untaught,  untrained  and  weakly 
emotional,  she  yet  remains  true  to  her 
religious  principles,  even  when  cir- 
cumstances are  most  unfavorable, 
and  in  the  end  she  feels  that  she  has 
had  her  own  sufficient  reward  in 
bringing  her  son  up  to  man's 
estate. 

Waverley,  Captain  Edward,  titular 
hero  of  Scott's  historical  romance, 
Waverley,  or  'Tis  Sixty  Years  Since 
(18 14).  He  was  tall  and  athletic; 
"  his  person  promised  firmness  and 
agility;  "  "  his  blue  eye  seemed  of  that 
kind  which  melted  in  love  and  which 
kindled  in  war; "  he  was  handy  at 


Waynefleet 


380 


WeUer 


"  the  broadsword  and  target."  But 
he  had  no  settled  convictions;  mere 
chance  decided  his  change  from  a 
captain  in  the  king's  army  to  a  rebel 
under  Bonnie  Prince  Charlie,  and 
when  he  could  not  win  Flora  Mclvor 
he  subsided  cheerfully  enough  on 
the  more  commonplace  Rose  Brad- 
wardine.  Scott  himself  confessed  to 
his  friend  Merritt  that  the  Captain 
was  a  failure. 


"The  hero,'*  He  says,    "is   a   sneaking 

?iece  of  imbecility,  and  if  he  had  married 
lora  she  would  have  set  him  up  on  the 
chimney-piece  as  Count  Borolaski's  wife 
vised  to  do  with  him.  I  am  a  bad  hand  at 
depicting  a  hero  properly  so  called,  and 
have  an  unfortunate  propensity  for  the 
dubious  characters  of  Borderers,  buccaneers. 
Highland  robbers,  and  all  others  of  a  Robin 
Hood  description.!; 

Waynefleet,  Lady  Cicely,  heroine 
of  George  Bernard  Shaw's  comedy 
Captain  Brassbound' s  Conversion,  a 
pleasant  society  lady,  frank  and 
naive,  whose  predominant  impulse  is 
to  attribute  the  best  of  qualities  even 
to  the  worst  of  people,  thus  converting 
them  for  the  nonce  into  the  ideal  that 
she  conceives. 

One  of  the  most  living  and  laughing 
things  that  her  maker  has  made.  I  do  not 
know  any  stronger  way  of  stating  the  beauty 
of  the  character  than  by  saying  that  it  was 
written  specially  for  Ellen  Terry,  and  that 
it  is,  with  Beatrice,  one  of  the  very  few 
characters  in  which  the  dramatist  can  claim 
some  part  of  her  triumph. — G.  K.  Chester- 
ton :    Ceorgi  Bernard  Shaw. 

Combining,  as  she  does,  the  temperament 
of  Ellen  Terry  with  the  genial  esprit  of 
Bernard  Shaw,  Lady  Cicely  is  a  thoroughly 
delightful  and  unique  type  of  the  eternal 
feminine. — Archibald  Henderson:  George 
Bernard  Shaw,  p.  324. 

Wegg,  Silas,  in  Dickens's  Our 
Mutual  Friend  (1864-65),  a  one- 
legged  rascal  who  ekes  out  a  living  by 
keeping  a  stand  in  Cavendish  Square, 
where  he  sells  fruit,  gingerbread,  and 
ballads.  Mr.  Boffin,  in  sheer  kind- 
ness of  heart,  hires  him  for  two  hours 
every  evening  to  read  to  him.  The 
rascally  Wegg  pries  around  the  prem- 
ises, and,  having  found  a  Harmon 
will  of  later  date  than  that  under 
which  Boffin  had  taken  the  Harmon 
estate,  hoped  to  blackmail  Boffin, 
but  was  checkmated  by  the  produc- 
tion of  a  still  later  will. 


Weller,  Samuel  (better  known  as 
Sam;  called  Samivel  by  his  father),  in 
Dickens's  Pickwick  Papers,  an  em- 
bodirnent  of  London  low  life  in  its 
kindHest  and  most  entertaining  form. 
He  is  introduced  as  the  Boots  in  the 
White  Hart  Inn,  where  his  high 
spirits  and  his  unfailing  humor  so 
attract  Mr.  Pickwick  that  he  engages 
him  as  valet.  Thereafter  Sam  is  a 
devoted  attendant,  who  remains 
faithful  in  every  adversity,  even 
sharing  his  master's  imprisonment  in 
the  Fleet  by  having  himself  arrested 
for  debt.  Sam  Weller  may  have 
flashed  upon  Dickens  in  memory  of 
Sam  Vale,  an  actor  familiar  to  him  in 
boyhood.  Vale  was  the  Simon  Spat- 
terdash  of  a  musical  farce,  The 
Boarding  House,  revived  in  1822, 
whose  conversation  is  interlarded 
with  comparisons  like,  "  Come  on,  as 
the  man  said  to  his  tight  boot." 
From  the  stage  Sam  Vale  carried  this 
trick  of  speech  into  private  life,  and, 
being  a  man  with  a  great  reputation 
for  humor,  both  on  and  off  the  stage, 
the  latest  Sam  Valerism  would  circu- 
late from  mouth  to  mouth.  For  the 
rest  the  name  Wellpr  was  familiar  to 
Dickens;  his  mother  had  a  maid 
called  Mary  Weller,  apothesized  in 
Pickwick  as  Mary  the  pretty  house- 
maid, to  whom  Sam  writes  his 
famous  valentine. 

Sam  Weller  is  a  monster;  monstrous  and 
impossible  in  two  ways:  first  from  within, 
by  the  law  of  his  own  being,  which  would 
not  permit  such  a  development  as  must 
have  produced  the  creature  Dickens  has 
shown  us;  next  from  without,  the  conditions 
of  life  would  restrain  and  repress  such  de- 
velopment, even  if  the  germ  of  it  existed. 
.  .  .  Yet,  monster  as  he  is,  how  real  he 
seems F  he  is  a  living  monster;  we  know  him. 
Sam  Weller  lives  in  our  memories,  a  creature 
of  flesh  and  blood  more  real  than  h?ilf  our 
acquaintances." — Richard  Grant  White, 
in  St.  James's  Magazine,  August,  1870. 

Sam  Weller  corresponds  to  no  reality. 
The  Londoner  born  and  bred  is  apt  to  be 
the  dryest  and  most  uninteresting  of  beings. 
All  things  lost  for  him  the  gloss  of  novelty 
when  he  was  fifteen  years  old.  He  would  suit 
the  museum  of  a  nil  admirari  philosopher, 
as  a  specimen,  shrivelled  and  adust,  of  the 
ultimate  result  of  his  principle.  But  Dickens 
collected  more  jokes  than  all  the  cabmen  in 
London  would  utter  in  a  year,  and  bestowed 
the  whole  treasure  upon  Sam. — Peter 
Baynb. 


Weller 


381 


Werther 


Weller,  Tony,  in  Pickwick  Papers, 
the  father  of  Samuel,  a  coachman  of 
the  long-extinct  type  which  drove 
stages  between  London  and  the  subur- 
ban towns.  Tony's  provincial  end 
was  Dorking.  He  wore  a  broad- 
brimmed  hat,  top-boots,  a  great-coat 
of  many  capes,  and  a  multitude  of 
waistcoats.  Doubtless  Dickens  found 
the  original  in  real  life,  but  his  imagi- 
nation may  have  been  stimulated  by 
Washington  Irving's  description  of 
the  type. 

He  has  commonly  a  broad,  full  face,  curi- 
ously mottled  with  red,  as  if  the  blood  had 
been  forced  by  hard  feeding  Into  every 
vessel  of  the  skin;  he  is  swelled  into  jolly 
dimensions  by  frequent  potations  of  malt 
liquors,  and  his  bulk  is  still  further  increased 
by  a  multiplicity  of  coats  in  which  he  is 
buried  like  a  cauliflower,  the  upper  one 
reaching  to  his  heels.  He  wears  a  broad- 
brimmed,  low-crowned  bat;  a  huge  roll  of 
colored  handkerchiefs  around  his  neck, 
knowingly  knotted  and  tucked  in  at  the 
bosom;  and  has  in  summertime  a  large 
bouquet  of  flowers  in  his  button-hole, — the 
present,  most  probably,  of  some  enamoured 
country  lass.  His  waistcoat  is  commonly 
of  some  bright  color,  striped,  and  his  small- 
clothes extend  far  below  the  knees  to  meet 
a  pair  of  jockey  boots  which  reach  about 
half-way  up  his  legs. — Irving:  The  Sketch- 
book, The  Stage-Coach. 

Wemmick,  in  Dickens's  novel. 
Great  Expectations  (i860),  cashier  to 
Mr.  Jaggers.  In  the  office  he  is  hard, 
business  ^  like,^  tmimaginative.  At 
home  he  is  all  imagination.  With  his 
own  hands  he  had  transformed  his 
little  wooden  house,  which  he  calls 
the  Castle,  into  the  semblance  of  a 
miniature  fort.  It  has  a  real  flagstaff. 
A  plank  crossing  a  ditch  four  feet 
wide  and  two  deep  represents  the 
drawbridge.  Here  he  lives  with  his 
octogenarian  father,  whom  he  calls 
the  Aged,  and  whose  daily  delight  is 
to  fire  off  the  nine  o'clock  signal  gun, 
mounted  in  a  separate  fortress  made 
of  lattice-work.  There  is  an  evident 
reminiscence  here  of  Smollett's  Com- 
modore Trunnion. 

Wenham,  in  Thackeray's  novel. 
Vanity  Fair,  the  Marquis  of  Steyne's 
managing  man.  A  inean,  despicable 
creature,  he  is  plausibly  believed  to 
have  been  drawn  from  the  managing 
man  of  the  third  Marquis  of  Hertford, 
John  Wilson  Croker,  the  Rigby  (q.v.) 


of  Coningshy.  It  is  said  that,  when 
Croker  was  dead,  a  mutual  friend  told 
Thackeray  how  Croker  had  begged 
his  wife  to  seek  out  some  homeless 
boys  to  stay  with  them  from  Satur- 
day till  Monday.  "  They  will  destroy 
your  flower-beds  and  upset  my  ink- 
stands, but  we  can  help  them  more 
than  they  can  hurt  us."  Thackeray 
choked,  and  called  upon  Mrs.  Croker 
and  assured  her  he  would  never  speak 
ill  of  her  husband  again. — Louis 
Melville:  Prototypes  oj  Some  of 
Thackeray's  Characters. 

Werner,  the  name  assimied  by 
ICruitzner,  Count  of  Siegendorf,  hero 
of  Byron's  tragedy,  Werner,  or  the 
Inheritance  (1822).  Byron  avowedly 
took  his  plot  from  Kruitzner,  or  the 
German's  Tale,  in  the  Canterbury 
Tales  (vol.  m),  by  the  Misses  Lee. 
Harriet  Lee,  the  younger  of  the 
sisters,  was  sole  author  of  Kruitzner. 
Disowned  by  his  father  because  he 
has  married  beneath  him,  Kruitzner, 
in  a  moment  of  desperation,  steals  a 
rotileau  of  gold  from  the  usurping  heir, 
Stralenheim.  He  confesses  to  his 
wife  and  his  son  Ulric,  but  urges  in 
extenuation  of  his  crime  that  he 
might  have  slain  the  enemy  who  stood 
between  him  and  his  own.  The  con- 
fession and  its  plea  have  an  odd 
issue.  Ulric,  apparently  aghast  at 
his  father's  guilt,  is  really  spurred  on 
to  the  greater  guilt  which  his  father 
had  avoided.  Accident  reveals  the 
truth  after  Kruitzner  has  regained  his 
ancestral  estates,  and  when  Ulric  is 
on  the  point  of  marrying  the  daughter 
of  the  dead  Siegendorf.  Ulric  dis- 
appears with  his  father's  curse.  The 
curtain  descends  upon  a  death- 
stricken  family. 

Werther,  hero  of  a  novel,  The 
Sorrows  of  Werther  (1774),  by  Wolf- 
gang Goethe.  He  is  a  young  German 
student,  morbid,  over-sensitive,  poeti- 
cal, artistic,  who  retires  into  the 
country  for  rest  and  solace.  He  finds 
both  in  his  new  surroimdings.  Every- 
thing interests  him,  the  children  who 
play  around  him,  the  old  women  who 
wait  upon  him,  the  simple  life  of  his 
neighbors.  He  meets  Charlotte,  wife 
of  his  friend  Albert.    Liking  blazes 


Western 


382 


White 


into  a  terrible  passion.  He  flees  back 
to  town.  The  old  life  is  more  loath- 
some than  ever.  He  wearies  of  the 
monotony  of  conventional  society, 
his  pride  is  hurt  by  aristocratic  pre- 
tensions. In  vain  he  returns  to  the 
country.  The  renewal  of  his  acquaint- 
ance with  Charlotte  only  accentuates 
his  despair.  He  ends  by  shooting 
himself. 

The  novel  was  founded  partly  upon 
the  story  of  Goethe's  friend,  a  senti- 
mentalist named  Jerusalem,  who  com- 
mitted suicide  in  1772,  and  partly 
by  the  story  of  Goethe's  own  rela- 
tions with  Lotte  (i.e.,  Charlotte) 
Buff,  whom  he  met  (1772),  during  the 
interval  between  her  betrothal  and 
her  marriage  with  his  friend  Kestner 
and  who  awoke  in  him  a  passion  from 
which  he  delivered  himself  by  flight. 

Western,  Sophia,  heroine  of  Field- 
ing's novel  Tom  Jones,  who,  after  a 
series  of  misconceptions  and  misad- 
ventures, marries  the  not  entirely 
worthy  hero.  She  is  drawn  from  the 
same  model  as  Amelia  Booth, — i.e., 
Fielding's  wife.  Sophia  and  Amelia 
represent  Miss  Charlotte  Cradock 
before  and  after  she  became  Mrs. 
Henry  Fielding.  Miss  Sophia  is  the 
model  English  maid  of  her  period,  a 
little  too  soft  and  sweet  and  5iielding 
for  the  modem  taste,  but  historically 
true  to  the  past.  A  tender  heart  is 
conjoined  with  a  cultivated  mind;  the 
beauty  of  her  person  is  an  index  of  the 
soul  that  lodges  there.  She  never 
wavers  in  her  love  and  reverence  for 
her  father,  despite  all  he  is  and  says 
and  does.  She  does  not  even  ask  her- 
self whether  he  might  not  more  profit- 
ably employ  his  time  than  in  getting 
drunk  every  afternoon.  She  will  not 
marry  a  man  she  loathes,  but  short 
of  that  she  will  obey  her  father  in  all 
things,  will  submit  unquestioningly 
to  his  abuse  and  his  punishments. 

Western,  Squire,  in  Tom  Jones, 
father  of  the  above,  an  all-too-faithful 
picture  of  the  English  country  gentle- 
man of  the  mid-eighteenth  centviry. 
Though  bred  at  the  university,  he 
talked  the  broad  dialect  of  Somerset- 
shire, cursed  and  swore  and  used  foul 
language    in    the    presence    of    his 


womenkind  on  any  provocation,  was 
a  cruel  tyrant  to  his  daughter  Sophia 
(whom  at  the  same  time  he  idoKzed), 
and  got  drunk  every  day  of  his  life. 

An  Inimitable  picture  of  ignorance, 
prejudice,  irascibility,  and  rusticity,  united 
with  natural  shrewdness,  constitutional 
good  humor,  and  an  instinctive  affection  for 
his  daughter. — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

White  Lady  of  Avenel,  in  Scott's 
historical  novel.  The  Monastery 
(1820),  a  mysterious  spirit  who 
watches  over  the  fortunes  of  the 
Avenel  family,  and  is  "  aye  seen  to 
yammer  [shriek]  and  wail  before  ony 
o'  that  family  dies."  Among  other 
"  braw  services,"  she  rescued  Lady 
Alice's  "  thick  black  volume  with 
silver  clasps  "  from  the  papist  hands 
of  Father  Philip  and  Father  Eustace, 
and  afterward  took  Halbert  Glenden- 
ning  into  "  the  bowels  of  the  earth," 
there  to  find  it  lying  in  a  pyramid  of 
fire,  yet  unconsumed.  This  is  how 
she  describes  herself: 

Something  betwixt  heaven  and  hell. 
Neither  substance  quite  or  shadow; 
Haunting  lonely  moor  and  meadow. 
Dancing  by  the  haunted  spring; 
Riding  on  the  whirlwind's  wing; 
Aping  In  fantastic  fashion 
Every  change  of  human  passion. 

She  reappears  in  The  Abbot,  to 
show  her  interest  in  the  marriage 
of  Roland  Avenel  with  Catherine 
Seyton,  and  "  was  seen  to  sport 
by  her  haunted  well  with  a  zone 
of  gold  around  her  bosom  as  broad 
as  the  baldrick  of  an  earl."  (See 
Banshee.) 

White,  Selma,  in  Robert  Grant's 
novel,  Unleavened  Bread  (1900),  a 
young  Western  woman,  of  compara- 
tively humble  birth,  who  sacrifices 
self-respect  and  happiness  in  ceaseless 
struggle  as  a  soldier  climber.  She 
secures  a  divorce  from  her  first  hus- 
band, marries  an  architect  from  New 
York,  and  removes  thither,  to  find 
that  he  does  not  enjoy  the  social  dis- 
tinction she  covets.  On  his  death, 
she  allies  herself  to  a  politician  whose 
views  of  life,  though  different  from 
hers,  are  equally  meretricious.  He 
becomes  Governor  and  United  States 
Senator,  but  falls  through  corrupt 


Wickfield 


383 


Wildfire 


practices,  carrying  her  down  into  the 
gutter  with  himself. 

Wickfield,  Agnes,  in  Dickens's 
David  Copper  field  (1849-50),  daugh- 
ter of  Mr.  Wickfield,  a  solicitor,  and 
second  wife  of  David.  Andersen  saw 
in  Mrs.  Dickens  a  likeness  to  this 
character.  She  is  more  plausibly  a 
portrait  of  that  lady's  sister,  Georgi- 
ana  Hogarth. 

In  Agnes  he  has  painted  for  us  a  perfectly- 
unselfish  character,  living  day  by  day  in  the 
lives  of  others,  but  accustomed  from  child- 
hood to  a  certain  self-restraint,  which  en- 
ables her  the  better  to  conceal  the  one 
attachment  of  her  life  under  the  modest 
veil  of  true  sisterly  affection,  to  be  for  years 
as  an  adopted  sister  to  the  man  whom  in  the 
secret  shrine  of  her  pure  heart  she  wor- 
shipped as  a  lover. — M.  E.  Townsend: 
Great  Characters  of  Fiction,  p.  75. 

I  had  heard  many  people  remark  that 
Agnes  in  David  Copperfield  was  like  Dick- 
ens's own  wife,  and,  although  he  may  not 
have  chosen  her  deliberately  as  a  model  for 
Agnes,  yet  still  I  can  think  of  no  one  else  in 
his  books  so  near  akin  to  her  in  all  that  Is 
graceful  and  amiable.  Mrs.  Dickens  had  a 
certain  soft  womanly  repose  and  reserve 
about  her;  but  whenever  she  spoke  there 
came  such  a  light  into  her  large  eyes,  and 
such  a  smile  upon  her  lips,  and  there  was 
such  a  charm  in  the  tones  of  her  voice,  that 
henceforth  I  shall  always  connect  her  and 
Agnes  together. — H.  C.  Andersen:  Auto- 
biography. 

Wild  Irish  Girl,  title  of  a  novel 
(1806)  by  Sydney  Owenson,  Lady 
Morgan,  and  nickname  of  its  heroine, 
Glorvina, — in  whom  acquaintances 
of  the  author  detected  a  clever  bit  of 
self -portraiture.  She  is  the  last 
descendant  of  a  line  of  Connaught 
princes  who  for  centuries  had  been 
at  feud  with  the  Sassenach  earls  that 
had  dispossessed  them.  The  heir  to 
the  earldom  wooes  her  in  disguise, 
and  wins  her  after  many  romantic 
vicissitudes. 

Wild,  Jonathan  (i 682-1 725),  a 
famous  criminal  who  was  hanged  at 
Tyburn.  He  is  said  to  have  married 
six  wives.  He  was  a  receiver  of 
stolen  goodSj  who  for  a  long  time,  by 
clever  technicalities,  evaded  the  law, 
and  the  head  of  a  large  corporation 
of  thieves,  whom  he  organized  into 
gangs,  each  with  its  allotted  sphere 
of  work.  An  adept  in  suborning  per- 
jury, he  could  protect  the  loyal  among 


his  followers  and  crush  the  disloyal 
through  the  constituted  legal  chan- 
nels. He  is  a  subsidiary  character  in 
Ainsworth's  Jack  Sheppard,  the  sub- 
ject of  a  ballad,  Newgate's  Garland, 
printed  in  Swift's  Miscellanies,  and 
the  hero  of  romances  by  Defoe  and 
Fielding.  The  latter,  The  History  of 
Johnathan  Wild  the  Great  (1742), 
departs  widely  from  fact.  Fielding 
makes  his  hero  a  dissolute  rake  of 
ancient  lineage,  who  achieves  the 
sort  of  greatness  that  is  measured  by 
success  in  crime.  In  his  youth  he  is 
thrown  in  with  a  French  gambler, 
Count  La  Ruse,  and  so  far  betters  his 
rnaster's  instructions  that  the  count 
himself  becomes  his  victim.  All  goes 
well  with  _  Wild  until  his  marriage 
with  Letitia  Snap,  a  match  for  him- 
self in  deceit  and  vileness.  She  be- 
trays him  and  he  perishes  on  the 
gallows. 

Wildair,  Sir  Hany,  one  of  Far- 
quhar's  best-drawn  characters,  first 
introduced  in  his  comedy,  The  Con- 
stant Couple,  and  afterward  made  the 
hero  of  its  sequel.  Sir  Harry  Wildair. 
He  is  the  original  of  all  that  class  of 
characters  who  throw  the  witchery 
of  high  birth  and  splendid  manners 
and  reckless  dash,  good  humor,  gen- 
erosity, and  gayety  over  the  qualities 
of  the  fop,  the  libertine,  and  the 
spendthrift.  Farquhar  improved 
upon  this  first  sketch  in  his  Mirabel. 
Sheridan  seized  the  type  and  made 
it  his  own  in  the  still  more  famous 
Sir  Charles  Surface,  and  it  is  now  a 
stock  character  on  the  stage. 

Wilder,  in  Cooper's  romance  of  the 
sea.  The  Red  Rover  (1827),  the  name 
assumed  by  Henry  Ark  in  his  effort 
to  capture  the  famous  pirate. 

Wildfire,  Madge,  in  Scott's  ro- 
mance. The  Heart  of  Midlothian 
(18 1 8),  Meg  Murdock's  son's  daugh- 
ter, driven  to  insanity  by  the  profli- 
gate George  Staunton.  She  is  de- 
scribed as  "  a  tall,  strapping  wench, 
of  eighteen  or  twenty,  dressed  fan- 
tastically in  a  sort  of  blue  riding-coat, 
with  tarnished  lace;  her  hair  clubbed 
like  that  of  a  man;  a  Highland  bonnet 
and  a  bunch  of  broken  feathers:  a 
riding-skirt   or   petticoat   of   scarlet 


Wildgoose 


384 


Williams 


camlet  embroidered  with  tarnished 
flowers.  Her  features  were  coarse  and 
masctiline,  yet,  at  a  little  distance, 
by  dint  of  very  bright,  wild-looking 
black  eyes,  an  aquiline  nose,  and  a 
commanding  profile,  appeared  rather 
handsome."  She  derived  her  nick- 
name from  her  favorite  song,  begin- 
ning— 

I  glance  like  wildfire  through  country  and 
town. 

Coleridge  pronounced  her  the  most 
original  of  all  Scott's  characters. 
Scott  himself,  in  his  notes  to  the 
novel,  says  she  was  modelled  (with 
differences)  from  Feckless  (weak- 
minded)  Fannie,  a  curious,  crazed, 
pathetic  figure,  who  wandered  the 
country  far  and  near  about  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century. 

Wildgoose,  Geoffrey,  hero  of  a 
satirical  novel.  The  Spirittial  Quixote 
(1772),  by  Richard  Greaves,  a  not 
very  successfiil  burlesque  in  the  man- 
ner of  Cervantes.  Wildgoose,  a  young 
Oxonian,  becomes  a  convert  to  Meth- 
odism, and  roams  around  Gloucester- 
shire and  Somerset  in  company  with 
the  cobbler  Jeremiah  Tugwell. 

Wilding,  John,  in  The  Liar  (1761), 
a  farce  by  Samuel  Foote,  a  young 
gentleman  fresh  from  Oxford,  who 
has  a  marvellous  faculty  for  roman- 
cing. The  original  play  in  Spanish 
had  already  been  utilized  by  Cor- 
neille  in  Le  Menteur  and  by  Steele  in 
his  Lying  Lover  (1704). 

Wilkins,  Peter,  hero  of  The  Life 
and  Adventures  of  Peter  Wilkins, 
relating  chiefly  his  shipwreck  near  the 
South  Pole,  etc.  (1750).  It  purported 
to  be  written  by  "  R.  S.,  a  passenger 
in  the  Hector,*'  but  is  now  definitely 
attributed  to  one  Robert  Paltock. 
Like  Robinson  Crusoe,  Wilkins  was  a 
voyager  shipwrecked  on  a  desolate 
shore,  whereon  for  a  considerable 
time  he  dwelt  alone.  Finally,  through 
a  subterranean  cavern  he  passed  into 
a  kind  of  New  World,  and  met  with 
a  Gawrey,  or  Flying  Woman,  whose 
life  he  saved  and  whom  he  married. 
She  took  him  to  Nosmnbdsgrsutt, 
the  country  of  Glumms  and  Gawreys, 
or  men  and  women  who  fly,  and  a 
large  part  of  the  narrative  is  devoted 


to  a  description  of  their  manners  and 
customs.    See  Youwarkee. 

Willet,  John,  in  Dickens's  Barnaby 
Rudge  (1841),  landlord  of  the  May- 
pole Inn  at  Chigwell;  a  burly,  large- 
headed  man,  with  a  fat  face  which 
betokened  profound  obstinacy  and 
slowness  of  apprehension,  combined 
with  a  very  strong  reliance  on  his 
own  merits. 

His  pig-headedness  drives  his  son 
Joe  to  enlist  as  a  soldier;  Joe  comes 
back  without  his  right  arm,  marries 
Dolly  Varden,  and  succeeds  his  father 
as  landlord  of  the  Maypole  Inn. 

William,  Sweet  See  Susan, 
Black-eyed. 

Williams,  Caleb,  in  William  God- 
win's novel  of  that  name  (1794),  an 
intelligent  young  peasant,  taken  as 
secretary  into  the  service  of  Falkland 
(g.v.),  the  lord  of  the  manor.  Partly 
through  inquisitiveness,  partly  by 
accident,  he  discovers  the  secret  of 
the  gloom  and  mystery  hanging 
round  his  master.  Falkland  has 
committed  a  murder  and  allowed  an 
innocent  man  to  suffer  the  penalty. 
Finding  that  Williams  knows  all, 
he  swears  him  to  secrecy  imder  fright- 
ful penalties.  Williams's  spirit  re- 
volts at  the  servile  submission 
required  from  him.  He  escapes  from 
the  house.  Twice  Falkland  tracks 
him  down,  and  has  him  thrown  into 
prison  on  a  charge  of  robbery;  twice 
the  victim  escapes,  until,  harassed 
and  driven  into  a  comer,  he  conceives 
himself  absolved  from  his  oath  and 
comes  forward  as  the  public  accuser 
of  Falkland. 

Williams,  Slogger,  in  Thomas 
Hughes's  Tom  Brown  at  Rugby,  the 
nickname  of  the  school  bully  and 
fistic  champion,  bested  by  the  hero 
in  a  great  fight  incurred  by  Tom  in 
defence  of  his  friend  Arthur.  The 
account  is  of  quite  a  professional 
character.  The  fight  is  stopped  by 
the  doctor  as  "  The  Slogger "  is 
thrown  for  the  third  time.  Thackeray 
has  a  similar  episode  in  Vanity  Fair 
(1848),  where  Cuff,  the  Cock  of  the 
Walk,  is  reduced  to  the  rank  of 
second  Cock  by  the  prowess  of  the 
despised  "  Figs,"  — i.e.,  Dobbin. 


Willie 


385 


Winkle 


Waiie,  Holy,  hero  of  a  poem,  Holy 
Willie's  Prayer,  by  Robert  Bums,  a 
canting  hypocrite,  recognized  as  a 
legitimate  caricature  of  one  William 
Fisher,  leading  elder  in  the  kirk- 
session  at  Kilmamoch,  who  had 
publicly  denotmced  the  poet  for 
immorality.  This  precious  pharisee 
was  afterward  found  guilty  of  em- 
bezzling money  from  the  church 
offerings.  He  ended  his  career  by 
dying  in  a  ditch,  into  which  he  had 
fallen  when  intoxicated. 

Wilmot.  There  are  three  charac- 
ters of  this  name,  differentiated  as 
Old  Wilmot,  Mrs.  Wilmot,  and  Young 
Wilmot,  in  George  Lillo's  tragedy, 
Fatal  Curiosity  (1736).  The]  story  is 
that  of  a  father  and  mother  reduced 
to  the  extremity  of  want,  who  murder 
a  visitor  to  their  house  for  the  sake 
of  his  casket  of  jewels,  and  afterward 
find  the  victim  was  their  son.  Yoimg 
Wilmot,  returning  home  after  an 
absence  of  many  years,  had  been 
prompted  by  curiosity  to  visit  his 
parents  incognito,  and  his  mother, 
in  her  turn,  had  the  curiosity  to 
examine  the  stranger's  box  while  he 
was  taking  an  opportime  nap.  Lillo 
foimd  his  material  in  a  pamphlet 
purporting  to  narrate  an  episode 
which  happened  in  161 8  at  "  Perin," 
— i.e.,  Penryn,  the  scene  of  the  drama. 
Goethe  produced  Fatal  Curiosity  at 
Weimar  (excusing  himself  on  the  plea 
that  wine-drinkers  rehsh  an  occasional 
glass  of  brandy),  and  this  production 
suggested  to  Zacharias  Werner  his 
February  24,  the  most  successful  of 
all  German  Schicksalstragodien  (or 
Fate-  Tragedies) .  See  also  Charlotte  . 

Wilson,  William,  hero  of  a  short 
story  by  E.  A.  Poe.  Wilson  has  an 
cUter  ego  or  doppelgdnger,  who  pursues 
him  through  life  and  finally  kills  him 
in  a  duel.    See  Jekyll,  Dr. 

He  [Poel  lived  and  died  a  riddle  to  his 
friends.  Those  who  had  never  seen  him  in 
a  paroxysm  could  not  believe  that  he  was 
the  perverse  and  vicious  person  painted  in 
the  circulated  tales  of  his  erratic  doings.  To 
those  who  had  he  was  two  men, — the  one 
an  abnormally  wicked  and  profane  repro- 
bate, the  other  a  quiet  and  dignified  gentle- 
man. The  special  moral  and  mental  condi- 
tion Incident  to  cerebral  epilepsy  explains 
these  apparent  contradictions  as  felicitously 


as  it  elucidates  the  intellectual  and  psychical 
traits  of  his  literature. — Francis  Gerry 
Fairfield:  A  Madman  of  Letters,  Scrib- 
ner's  Monthly,  x,  p.  696. 

Wimble,  Will,  a  member  of  the 
fictitious  Spectator  Club  (g.».);  said 
to  be  intended  as  a  portrait  of  a  Mr. 
Thomas  Morecroft  (d.  1741). 

Winkelried,  Arnold  von,  an  his- 
torical character,  whom  James  Mont- 
gomery makes  the  hero  of  a  narrative 
poem.  Make  Way  for  Liberty.  At  the 
great  battle  of  Sempach,  July  9, 1836, 
which  freed  Switzerland  from  the 
yoke  of  Austria,  the  Swiss  had  failed 
for  a  long  time  to  break  the  serried 
ranks  of  the  enemy.  At  last  Arnold, 
commending  his  wife  and  children  to 
the  care  of  his  comrades,  rushed  for- 
ward, hurled  himself  upon  the  Aus- 
trian spears,  and  fell  pierced  through 
and  through,  but  not  before  he  had 
opened  a  way  for  his  countrymen  to 
follow  him  to  victory. 

Winkle,  Mr.,  Senior,  in  Dickens's 
Pickwick  Papers,  father  of  Nathaniel 
Winkle;  an  old  wharfinger  at  Birming- 
ham, a  man  of  methodical  habits, 
never  committing  himself  hastily 
in  any  affair.  He  is  greatly  displeased 
at  his  son's  marriage  to  Miss  Arabella 
Allen,  but  finally  forgives  him,  and 
admits  that  the  lady  is  "a  very 
charming  little  daughter-in-law,  after 
all." 

Winkle,  Nathaniel,  a  member  of 
the  Corresponding  Society  of  the 
Pickwick  Club,  and  a  cockney  pre- 
tender to  sporting  skill. 

Winkle,  Rip  Van,  hero  and  title 
of  a  short  story  (18 19),  by  Washing- 
ton Irving,  adopted  from  the  German 
legend  of  Peter  Klaus,  a  goatherd, 
who  fell  asleep  one  day  upon  the 
Kyffhauser  Hills  and  did  not  wake 
up  till  twenty  years  after,  when  he 
returned  to  his  native  village  to  find 
everything  changed  and  no  one  who 
knew  him.  In  Irving's  tale  the  hero 
is  one  of  the  Dutch  colonists  of  New 
York,  who,  just  before  the  Revolu- 
tion, goes  to  sleep  in  the  Kaatskill, 
and  wakes  to  find  that  George  Wash- 
ington has  ousted  George  III  and  that 
great  changes  have  occurred  in  his 
village  and  his  home.   A  stage  version 


Winterblossom 


386 


Wolsey 


by  Boucicault  earned  great  success 
through  the  histrionic  genius  of 
Joseph  Jefferson. 

The  first  number  of  the  Sketch-book  con- 
tained the  tale  of  Rip  Van  Winkle,  one  of 
the  most  charming  and  suggestive  of  legends, 
whose  hero  is  an  exceedingly  pathetic  crea- 
tion. It  is  indeed  a  mere  sketch,  a  hint,  a 
suggestion;  but  the  imagination  readily 
completes  it.  It  is  the  more  remarkable 
and  interesting  because,  although  the  first 
American  literary  creation,  it  is  not  in  the 
least  characteristic  of  American  life,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  is  a  quiet  and  delicate 
satire  on  it.  The  kindly  vagabond  asserts 
the  charm  of  loitering  idleness  in  the  sweet 
leisure  of  woods  and  fields,  against  the  char- 
acteristic American  excitement  of  the  over- 
flowing crowd  and  crushing  competition  of 
the  city,  its  tremendous  energy,  and  inces- 
sant devotion  to  money-getting. — Charles 
Dudley  Warner:    Washington  Irving. 

Winterblossom,    Mr.    Philip,    in 

Scott's  novel,  St.  Ronan's  Well,  the 
"  man  of  taste  "  who  presided  over 
the  table  d'hdte  at  Meg  Dod's,  and 
was  an  influential  member  of  the 
Committee  of  Management  in  the 
"  infant  Republic  of  St.  Ronan's 
Well." 

Witches,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy, 
Macbeth,  three  figures  "  so  withered 
and  so  wild  in  their  attire,"  who 
appear  before  Macbeth  and  Banquo 
in  Act  i,  Sc.  i,  and  make  startling 
prophecies  concerning  their  future 
destinies.  Lamb  combats  the  idea 
that  Shakespeare  was  indebted  for 
the  idea  of  his  "  weird  sisters  "  to 
Middleton's  tragedy,  The  Witch. 

His  witches  are  distinguished  from  the 
witches  of  Middleton  by  essential  differ- 
ences. These  are  creatures  to  whom  man 
or  woman  plotting  some  dire  mischief  might 
resort  for  occasional  consultation.  Those 
originate  deeds  of  blood,  and  begin  bad 
impulses  to  men.  From  the  moment  that 
their  eyes  first  meet  with  Macbeth's  he  is 
spellbound.  That  meeting  sways  his  destiny. 
He  can  never  break  the  fascination.  These 
witches  can  hurt  the  body;  those  have  power 
over  the  soul. — Specimens  of  Early  Dramatic 
Poetry. 

Witching  Hill,  an  imaginary  local- 
ity in  which  E.  W.  Homung  places 
eight  tales  which  he  has  bound  to- 
gether under  the  general  title  of 
Witching  Hill  (19 12).  Several  gen- 
erations ago,  we  are  told,  this  estate 
was  the  seat  of  a  very  wicked  noble- 
man, and  the  evil  he  did  lives  after 


him.  The  Hill  is  cursed.  All  who 
come  to  occupy  the  suburban  villas 
erected  on  the  subdivided  estate 
succumb  to  its  evil  influence.  Blame- 
less on  arrival,  they  are  speedily 
moved  by  an  irresistible  impulse  to 
deeds  of  darkness. 

Wititterley,  Mr.  Henry,  in  Dick- 
ens's Nicholas  Nickleby,  a  self- 
important  snob,  plain  in  face  and 
rnanners,  but  continually  boasting  of 
his  acquaintance  with  the  aristocracy. 
His  wife,  J\ilia,  is  a  tufthunter  as 
shoddy  as  himself.  The  couple  are 
an  apparent  reminiscence  of  Beau 
Tibbs  and  his  wife,  but  painted  with 
a  coarser  brush. 

Witwould,  Sir  Wilful,  hero  of 
Congreve's  comedy,  The  Way  of  the 
World  (1700),  a  coxcomb,  light- 
hearted,  cynical,  and  well-bred,  who 
never  opens  his  lips  without  a  com- 
pliment, and  in  his  extravagant 
chatter  reaches  the  utmost  heights 
of  folly. 

WoflBaigton,  Margaret,  or  Peg,  in 
Charles  Reade's  drama.  Masks  and 
Faces  (1852),  afterward  turned  into 
the  novel,  Peg  Woffington,  is  the  Irish 
actress  of  that  name  (17 18-1760),  who 
bewitched  the  London  public  and 
was  the  mistress  of  David  Garrick 
before  his  marriage.  Here  she  is 
represented  as  of  virginal  innocence, 
beautiful  and  vivacious,  of  brilliant 
wit  and  of  extraordinary  mimetic 
powers.  In  the  greenroom  of  Covent 
Garden  Theatre  she  tricks  an  entire 
dramatic  company  by  impersonating 
the  tragic  actress  Anne  Bracegirdle. 
Later,  in  the  studio  of  James  Triplett, 
who  has  painted  her  portrait,  she 
successfully  essays  a  more  difficult 
feat.  A  party  composed  of  actors 
and  would-be  art  critics  are  coming 
in  an  unfavorable  mood  to  criticise 
the  painting.  She  cuts  out  the 
painted  face,  inserts  her  own  in  the 
aperture,  and,  after  the  fault-finders 
have  done  their  worst,  confounds 
them  by  exploding  the  truth  upon 
them. 

Wolsey,  Thomas,  Cardinal  (1475- 
1530).  a  famous  English  statesman; 
lord  chancellor  and  prime  minister 
of  Henry  VIII  from  1515  to  1529 


Woodhouse 


387 


Wren 


when  he  fell  in  disgrace  with  the 
king  and  was  deprived  of  his  oflBces. 
A  year  later  he  died.  He  appears  in 
Shakespeare's  Henry  VIII  and  is  one 
of  the  great  characters  of  the  play, 
arrogant,  aggressive,  tricky,  and  re- 
vengeful when  in  power,  but  accepting 
his  fall  in  a  noble  and  chastened  spiiit. 

Wolsey  is  drawn  with  superb  power; 
ambition,  fraud,  vindictiveness,  have  made 
him  their  own,  yet  cannot  quite  ruin  a 
nature  possessed  of  noble  qualities.  It  is 
hard  at  first  to  refuse  to  Snakespeare  the 
authorship  of  Wolsey 's  famous  soliloquy  in 
which  he  bids  his  greatness  farewell  (in,  ii, 
3So),  but  it  is  certainly  Fletcher's. — E. 
Dowden:    Shakespeare  Primer. 

Woodhouse,  Emma,  heroine  of 
Miss  Austen's  novel,  Emma  (1816), 
a  clever  young  woman,  who  exagger- 
ates her  own  cleverness  and  meets 
with  disaster  in  her  attempts  to 
marry  off  her  friends  to  those  she 
considers  their  proper  mates.  Finally 
when  she  discovers  that  Harriet 
Smith,  an  amiable  weakling  whom 
she  had  designed  for  Frank  Churchill, 
is  secretly  in  love  with  her  own 
brother-in-law  Knightly,  Emma  takes 
alarm,  for  she  realizes  that  nobody 
save  herself  must  marry  him.  Her 
unconscious  admiration  for  Mr. 
Knightly's  plain  common  sense,  his 
honesty  even  in  finding  fault  with 
her,  and  his  quiet  strength  of  char- 
acter had  changed  with  her  own 
growth  into  love.  Fortunately,  he 
has  been  in  love  with  her  from  the 
first. 

Woodhouse,  Mr.,  in  Jane  Austen's 
Emma,  the  father  of  the  titular 
heroine.  He  is  a  valetudinarian, 
humored  by  his  doctor,  but  unself- 
ishly and  courteously  solicitous  for 
others'  health  besides  his  own.  His 
daughter  has  to  be  watchful  lest  out 
of  sheer  kindness  he  starve  his  guests. 
He  chagrins  Miss  Bates  by  sending 
out  the  asparagus,  thinking  it  not 
quite  dressed.  He  makes  amends 
with  presents  of  pork,  as' "  a  leg  of 
pork  boiled  delicately  with  a  little 
turnip  is  not  im wholesome."  He  is 
apt  to  be  rather  prolix  over  little 
Bella's  sore  throat  and  his  one 
acrostic;  "  Kitty,  a  fair  but  frozen 
maid,  kindled  a  flame  that  I  deplore." 


Woodville,  Elizabeth,  Lady  Grey, 

queen  of  Edward  IV,  the  first  English 
woman  who  after  the  conquest  was 
raised  from  the  rank  of  subject  to 
that  of  royalty.  She  was  the  widow 
of  Sir  Jolm  Gray  when  Edward  IV, 
hunting  in  a  forest  near  Grafton,  her 
father's  residence,  first  caught  sight 
of  her.  She  is  introduced  in  Shake- 
speare's Richard  III,  and,  in  Act  Iv, 
Sc.  iv,  entertains  a  proposal  from  the 
enemy  of  her  house  for  the  hand  of  her 
daughter  Ehzabeth,  secretly  planning, 
however,  to  marry  her  to  Richmond 
in  case  of  the  latter's  success. 

Worm,  William,  in  A  Pair  of  Blue 
Eyes  (1873),  one  of  the  best-drawn 
of  all  Thomas  Hardy's  rustic  char- 
acters. He  is  the  Vicar's  out-door 
man,  a  "  poor,  wambling  creature," 
as  he  describes  himself,  afflicted  with 
perpetual  noises  in  his  head,  who 
''  hoped  Providence  would  have  found 
it  out  by  this  time,  living  so  many 
years  in  a  parson's  family,  too,  as  I 
have,  but  'a  don't  seem  to  relieve  me. 
Ay,  I  be  a  poor,  wambling  man,  and 
life's  a  mere  bubble." 

Wray,  Enoch,  hero  of  Crabbe's 
poem,  The  Village  Patriarch  (1738). 
A  centenarian,  blind  and  poor,  he  is 
reverenced  by  the  entire  neighbor- 
hood for  his  wisdom,  meekness  and 
pious  resignation. 

Wraybum,  Eugene,  in  Dickens's 
Our  Mutual  Friend,  a  briefless  barris- 
ter who  hates  his  profession,  flippant, 
sarcastic,  indolent,  alternating  from 
jovial  high  spirits  to  gloomy  depres- 
sion. Lizzie  Hexam  saves  his  life 
from  the  murderous  machinations  of 
the  jealous  schoolmaster,  Bradley- 
Headstone,  and  nurses  him  tenderly 
through  a  long  and  dangerous  illness. 
He  marries  her  and,  transformed  by 
the  power  of  love,  develops  unsus- 
pected purpose  and  energy. 

Wren,  Jenny,  in  Dickens's  novel. 
Our  Mutual  Friend,  an  affectionate 
nickname  generally  given  to  Fanny 
Cleaver,  a  doll's  dress-maker,  from 
her  diminutive  size  and  the  deter- 
mined sprightliness  with  which  she 
meets  all  misfortime.  She  supports  a 
good-natured  but  drunken  father 
known  facetiously  as  Mr.  Dolls. 


Wronsky 


388 


Yorick 


This  young  lady  is  the  type  of  a  certain 
class  of  characters  of  which  Mr.  Dickens  has 
made  a  specialty,  and  with  which  he  has 
been  accustomed  to  draw  alternate  smUes 
and  tears  according  as  he  pressed  one  spring 
or  another.  But  this  is  very  cheap  merri- 
ment and  very  cheap  pathos.  Miss  Jermy 
Wren  is  a  poor  little  dwarf,  afflicted,  as  she 
constantly  reiterates,  with  a  "bad  back" 
and  "queer  legs,"  who  makes  dolls'  dresses, 
and  is  forever  pricking  at  those  with  whom 
she  converses  in  the  air  with  her  needle,  and 
assuring  them  that  she  knows  "their  tricks 
and  their  manners."  Like  all  Mr.  Dickens's 
pathetic  characters,  she  is  a  little  monster. — 
Henry  James:    Views  and  Reviews. 

Wronsky,  Count  Alexis,  in  Tol- 
stoy's novel,  Amia  Karenina,  the 
lover  of  the  heroine.  (See  Kare- 
nina.) 

Wronsky  is  described  to  us  by  Stiva:  he 
is  "one  of  the  finest  specimens  of  the 
jeunesse  dorie  of  St.  Petersburg;  immensely 
rich,  handsome,  aide-de-camp  to  the  em- 
peror, great  interest  at  his  back  and  a  good 
fellow  notwithstanding;  more  than  a  good 
fellow,  intelligent  besides  and  well  read — a 
man  who  has  a  splendid  career  before  him." 
Let  us  complete  the  picture  by  adding  that 
Wronsky  is  a  powerful  man,  over  thirty, 
bald  at  the  top  of  his  head,  with  irreproach- 
able manners,  cool  and  calm,  but  a  little 
haughty.    A  hero,  one  murmurs  to  oneself, 


too  much  of  the  Guy  Livingstone  type, 
though  without  the  bravado  and  exaggera- 
tion. .  .  .  But  Wronsky  improves  to- 
ward the  end. — Matthew  Arnold:  Essays 
in  Criticism.   II  Series. 

Wynne,  Hugh,  hero  of  a  novel  of 
the  American  Revolution,  Hugh 
Wynne,  Free  Qimker  (1897),  by  Dr. 
S.  Weir  Mitchell.  Hugh,  who  teHs 
his  own  story,  is  the  son  of  a  Qtiaker 
merchant  in  Philadelphia,  sternly  set 
against  all  youthfvil  folly  and  against 
any  armed  resistance  to  constituted 
authority.  In  his  youth,  however,  he 
had  married  a  gay,  light-hearted,  but 
loving  and  devoted  French  girl, 
whose  traits  mingle  antagonistically 
with  the  Quaker  inheritance  in  young 
Wynne's  blood.  The  latter  defies  his 
father,  joins  the  rebels,  and  rises, 
after  many  vicissitudes,  to  be  a 
brevet  Ueutenant-colonel  on  Wash- 
ington's stafif.  He  loves  Darthea 
Peniston,  but  this  romance  is  com- 
plicated by  the  fact  that  she  is  loved 
also  by  his  best  friend,  Jack  Warder, 
and  his  worst  enemy,  Arthur  Wynne, 
his  own  cousin  and  a  plausible  villain. 


X,  Y 


Xury,  in  Defoe's  Robinson  Crusoe, 
a  Moresco  boy,  servant  to  Crusoe. 

Yahoos,  in  Swift's  Gulliver's  Travels 
(1726),  a  race  of  beings,  human  in 
shape  but  brutish  or  worse  in  spirit. 
Squalid,  screaming,  filthy  wretches, 
they  evidently  represent  Swift's  idea 
of  what  hmnanity  really  is  beneath 
its  veneer  of  civilization  and  under 
its  accidental  complement  of  clothes. 
Contrasted  with  them  are  their 
masters,  the  gentle  and  gracious 
Houyhnhnms,  a  race  of  horses  en- 
dowed with  reason. 

Yarico,  heroine  of  the  story.  Inkle 
and  Yarico,  told  by  Richard  Steele 
in  the  Spectator,  No.  11  (March  13, 
171 1 ),  and  which  he  found  in  Ligon's 
History  of  Barbadoes  (1657). 

She  was  a  slave  in  the  West  Indies 
where  Ligon  himself  was  her  over- 
seer. In  1647  a  young  Londoner, 
Thomas  Inkle,  landed  on  the  island 
with  a  party  of  prospectors,  who  were 


intercepted  by  the  natives.  All  were 
slain  save  Inkle,  who  was  hidden 
away  in  the  forests  and  protected  by 
Yarico.  Some  months  later  the 
couple  sighted  a  passing  vessel,  and 
escaped  on  it  to  the  Barbadoes.  This 
was  a  slave  mart.  As  they  neared 
the  port,  Inkle's  love  of  gain  and 
habits  of  civilization  resumed  their 
sway.  He  sold  Yarico  for  a  large 
sum,  partly  based  upon  her  hope  of 
motherhood.  George  Colman,  the 
younger,  founded  a  musical  drama, 
Inkle  and  Yarico  (1787),  on  this  plot, 
which  had  already  been  utilized  by 
the  German  Gessner  (1762).  Rufus 
Dawes  in  1839  published  a  poem, 
Yarico's  Lament:  Edward  Jeming- 
ham  another,  The  Epistle  of  Yarico 
to  Inkle  (1766). 

Yorick,  in  Shakespeare's  Hamlet, 
is  alluded  to  in  Act  v,  i,  as  a  former 
jester  at  the  King  of  Denmark's 
court.  Hamlet,  picking  up  his  skiill 
in  the  graveyard  scene,  tells  Horatio 


Youwarkee 


389 


Zanga 


that  he  remembered  him  as  "a 
fellow  of  infinite  jest,  of  most  excellent 
fancy,"  and  is  led  on  to  moralizing 
on  the  pathos  of  life  and  death. 

Laurence  Sterne  borrows  the  name 
for  one  of  his  characters  in  Tristram 
Shandy f  a  lively,  reckless,  and  humor- 
ous parson,  whom  he  represents  as 
of  Danish  origin  and  a  descendant 
from  Shakespeare's  Yorick.  Steme 
drew  this  portrait  from  himself, 
virtually  acknowledging  as  much 
when  he  took  it  as  a  pseudonym 
on  the  title-page  of  A  Sentimental 
Journey  and  some  volumes  of  sermons. 

Edward  Dowden,  in  his  Shakespeare 
Primer,  makes  a  brilliant  suggestion: 
Jaques  died,  we  know  not  how  or  when  or 
where;  but  he  came  to  life  again  a  century 
later,  and  appeared  in  the  world  as  an 
English  clergyman.  We  need  stand  in  no 
doubt  as  to  his  character,  for  we  all  know 
him  under  his  later  name  of  Laurence  Steme. 
"Mr.  Yorick  made  a  mistake  about  his 
family  tree;  he  came  not  out  of  the  play  of 
Hamlet,  but  out  of  As  You  Like  It.  In 
Arden  he  wept  and  moralized  over  the 
wounded  deer,  and  at  Namport  his  tears  and 
sentiment  gushed  forth  for  the  dead 
donkey.!! 

Youwarkee,  heroine  of  Robert 
Paltock's  Adventures  of  Peter  Wilkins 
(1750).  She  is  a  Gawrey,  or  flying 
woman,  in  the  imaginary  country  of 
Nosmnbdsgrsutt,     Wilkins,  a  ship- 


wrecked mariner,  came  upon  the 
lady  when  she  was  wounded,  nursed 
her  back  to  health,  accompanied  her 
to  her  people,  and  married  her.  The 
flying  apparatus  of  these  people 
(called  a  graundee)  consisted  of  a 
natural  investment  Hke  delicate  silk 
and  whalebone,  which  flew  open  at 
pleasure,  and  thus  furnished  its 
possessor  with  wings  or  a  dress, 
according  to  the  requirement  of  the 
moment.  Peter's  future  wife  had 
been  sporting  in  the  air  with  some 
other  young  damsels,  one  of  whom, 
happening  to  brush  too  strongly 
against  her  as  they  stooped  among 
some  trees,  had  occasioned  the  acci- 
dent which  was  the  cause  of  his  good 
fortune. 

The  book  is  dedicated  to  Elizabeth, 
Countess  of  Northimiberland.  The 
author  professes  that  it  was  after  the 
pattern  of  her  virtues  he  drew  the 
*'  mind  "  of  his  Youwarkee. 

Now,  a  sweeter  creature  is  not  to  be  found 
in  books;  and  she  does  him  immortal  honor. 
She  is  all  tenderness  and  vivacity;  all  bom 
good  taste  and  blessed  companionship.  Her 
pleasure  consists  but  in  his:  she  prevents 
all  his  wishes;  has  neither  prudery  nor 
immodesty;  sheds  not  a  tear  but  from  right 
feeling;  is  the  good  of  his  home,  and  the 
grace  of  his  fancy.— Leigh  Hunt. 


Zadig,  hero  of  a  philosophical 
romance  Zadig,  or  Destiny  (1747),  by 
Voltaire.  A  young  Babylonian,  full 
of  every  virtue,  religious^  without 
bigotry,  profoimdly  versed  in  all  the 
learning  of  his  time,  intelligent,  acute, 
and  clever,  his  comic  misadventures 
when  he  seeks  to  reform  the  world 
are  pegs  for  the  author's  philosophical 
commentary.  In  the  end  he  finds 
that  convention  and  formula  are 
invincible,  and  that  it  is  impossible 
to  seciire  any  adequate  share  of  even 
altruistic  happiness,  by  reason  of  the 
madice,  selfishness,  and  stupidity  of 
one's  neighbors. 

Zaire,  heroine  and  title  of  a  five- 
act  tragedy  in  verse  (1732)  by 
Voltaire.  She  is  a  captive  among  the 
Turks,  bom  a  Christian  but  brought 


up  as  a  Mahomedan  and  now  in  love 
with  the  Moslem  prince  Orosmanes, 
who  seeks  her  hand  in  marriage.  At 
this  jtmcture  she  is  recognized  by  her 
father,  Lusignan,  and  her  brother, 
Nerestan,  who  have  come  to  ransom 
all  Christian  captives.  They  are 
horrified  at  the  contemplated  sacri- 
lege of  marriage  with  an  infidel. 
Zaire  keeps  a  midnight  appointment 
with  Nerestan,  and  is  surprised  by 
Orosmanes,  who  stabs  her  in  the 
belief  that  she  is  faithless.  When  he 
learns  that  Nerestan  is  her  brother,  he 
stabs  himself  in  turn  over  her  corpse. 
Zanga,  in  Young's  tragedy  of  The 
Revenge  (i 721),  is  the  Moorish  servant 
of  Don  Alonzo,  a  Spaniard  of  military 
renown,  whom  he  hates, — ^vicariously, 
for  that  he  slew  his  father  in  battle, 


Zanoni 


390 


Zimri 


and  personally,  because  he  had  struck 
him  on  the  cheek.  Swearing  endless 
vengeance,  Zanga  insidiously  sepa- 
rates Alonzo  from  friend  and  wife, 
prompting  the  execution  of  the  one 
and  the  suicide  of  the  other.  Then 
he  reveals  the  truth,  exults  when  his 
dupe  stabs  himself,  and  goes  to  the 
scaffold  contented  with  the  ruin  he 
has  wrought.  Zanga  was  a  favorite 
part  of  Henry  Mossop  and  John 
Kemble  and  was  acted  by  Macready 
during  his  first  season.     (See  Abde- 

LAZER.) 

Zanoni,  hero  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  (1842)  by  Lord  Lytton,  a 
mysterious  personage  who  communi- 
cates with  spirits,  possesses  the  power 
of  prolonging  life,  and  can  produce 
gold  and  silver  and  precious  stones 
from  his  crucible.  After  having  lived 
many  centuries,  he  marries  an  opera- 
singer,  resigning  thereby  his  gifts  of 
supernatural  vision  and  immortality, 
and  perishes  during  the  Reign  of 
Terror. 

Zarca,  in  George  Eliot's  poem.  The 
Spanish  Gypsy  (1868),  the  lover  of 
Fedalma. 

A  vision  of  no  small  beauty,  the  concep- 
tion of  a  stalwart  chief  who  distils  the  cold 
exultation  of  his  purpose  from  the  utter 
loneliness  and  obloquy  of  his  race. — Henry 
Jambs:  Views  and  Reviews, 

Zeluco,  hero  of  a  novel  of  that 
name  (1786),  by  Dr.  John  Moore. 
A  Sicilian  nobleman,  dull  of  intellect, 
handsome,  profligate,  passionate  and 
vindictive,  with  no  virtue  save  the 
courage  that  serves  to  stimulate  his 
excesses,  he  passes  through  an  unre- 
strained boyhood  and  a  youth  of  dis- 
sipation to  a  manhood  of  conscience- 
less pride,  lust  and  cruelty.  The  boy 
who  in  a  fit  of  ill-temper  crushes  to 
death  a  sparrow  in  his  hand,  ripens 
into  the  man  who,  in  causeless  jeal- 
ousy of  his  wife,  strangles  his  infant 
child  with  the  same  remorseless 
fingers.  Accidental  retribution  comes 
from  the  fatal  stroke  of  a  murderer 
while  Zeluco  himself  was  seeking  to 
crown  his  infamies  with  a  fearful 
tragedy. 

Zenda,  an  imaginary  castle  in  the 
imaginary  country  of  Ruritania,  the 


latter  evidently  modelled  after  one 
or  more  of  the  little  Balkan  kingdoms. 
Here  for  three  mysterious  months  an 
English  gentleman,  Rudolf  Rassen- 
dyll,  is  held  captive  as  an  involuntary 
and  unconscious  impersonation  of  the 
King  of  Ruritania,  and  here  he  wins 
the  heart  of  the  monarch's  beautiful 
cousin. 

Zenelophon.  (See  Cophetua, 
King.) 

Zenobia,  in  The  Blithedale  Ro- 
mance (1852),  by  Nathaniel  Haw- 
thorne, a  brilliant  and  beautiful 
woman.  She  has  a  dark  history, 
which  she  would  forget  in  a  later 
love  for  Hollingsworth.  As  he  is  in 
love  with  Priscilla,  she  drowns  her- 
self. There  are  few  scenes  in  litera- 
ture more  realistic  than  the  finding 
of  Zenobia's  body,  in  the  dead  of  the 
night,  drawn  from  the  dark  stream, 
a  crooked,  stiff  shape,  and  carried  to 
the  farm-house,  where  old  women  in 
nightcaps  jabber  over  it.  The  author 
doubts  whether  Zenobia,  if  she  had 
forseen  her  appearance  after  drown- 
ing, would  ever  have  committed  the 
act.  Hawthorne,  in  his  American 
Note-books,  describes  a  similar  scene 
which  happened  when  he  was  living 
at  the  Old  Manse,  but  the  victim 
here  was  an  ordinary  farmer's  daugh- 
ter. To  some  extent  Zenobia  was 
undoubtedly  suggested  by  Margaret 
Fuller,  who  was  with  Hawthorne  at 
Brook  Farm,  but  her  traits  were 
probably  drawn  from  various  soiirces. 

Zimri,  in  Dry  den's  Absalom  and 
Achitophel,  is  a  brilliant  satire  on  the 
second  Duke  of  Buckingham,  who 
had  previously  caricatured  the  poet 
as  Bayes  (q.v.)  in  The  Rehearsal.  As 
Zimri  conspired  against  Asa,  king  of 
Judah,  so  Bucfingham  "  fonned 
parties  and  joined  factions  "  (i  Kings, 
xvi,  9)  against  Charles  II  and  his 
brother  James,  Duke  of  York. 

Some  of  the  chiefs  were  princes  in  the  land; 
In  the  first  rank  of  these  did  Zimri  stand. 
A  man  so  various  that  he  seemed  to  be 
Not  one,  but  all  mankind's  epitome; 
Stiff  in  opinions,  always  in  the  wrong. 
Was  everything  by  starts  and  nothing  long; 
But  in  the  course  of  one  revolving  moon 
Was  chymist,  fiddler,  statesman,  and  buf- 
foon a.  545). 


Zriny 


391 


Zuleika 


Zriny,  Nicholas,  Count  of,  a  Hun- 
garian patriot  (1508- 1 566),  is  espe- 
cially famous  for  his  defence  of  his 
castle  of  Szigeth  against  the  besieging 
army  of  Soliman.  He  was  killed  in  a 
last  desperate  sally,  the  Moslems  then 
stormed  the  castle,  but  they  had  no 
sooner  entered  than  the  powder 
magazine  exploded  with  terrific  vio- 
lence. This  siege  cost  the  invading 
army  the  lives  of  twenty  thousand 
men.  Moreover,  the  sultan  himself, 
who  had  been  in  feeble  health,  three 
days  before  the  capture  of  the  castle, 
died  of  vexation  at  the  repeated 
failure  of  his  assaults.  The  story  of 
Zriny,  who  is  sometimes  called  the 
Hungarian  Leonidas,  has  afforded  a 
tempting  subject  to  dramatists,  but 
Komer's  tragedy  (1814)  is  the  only 


one  that  has  survived.  An  epic  poem 
called  The  Fall  of  Sigeth  was  published 
in  1 65 1  by  Nicholas  Zriny,  a  descend- 
ant of  the  great  warrior. 

Zuleika,  in  Byron's  Bride  of  Aby- 
dos  (1813),  daughter  of  Giaffir,  the 
pacha  of  Abydos.  Her  love  for 
her  cousin  ^Selim  is  frowned  upon 
by  the  pacha;  the  young  couple 
elope  and  are  pursued  by  Giaffir. 
Selim  is  shot,  Zuleika  dies  of  a  broken 
heart. 

Never  was  a  faultless  character  more 
delicately  or  more  justly  delineated  than 
that  of  Lord  Byron's  Zuleika.  Her  piety, 
her  intelligence,  her  strict  sense  of  duty, 
and  her  undeviating  love  of  truth,  appear 
to  have  been  originally  blended  in  her  mind, 
rather  than  inculcated  by  education.  She 
is  always  natural,  always  attractive,  always 
affectionate;  and  it  must  be  admitted  that 
her  affections  are  not  unworthily  bestowed. 


R,„e*ed  books  are  subjeot^ 


KBJ.  cm.    OCT     1 1985 


^geliU%-" 


F 


II.C.  BERKELEY  LIBMI 

illil 


i 


